America Reborn

America Reborn by Martin Walker Here is the story of
America in the twentieth century as told through the lives
of twenty-six of its most remarkable and historically
crucial men and women. The people Martin Walker has chosen
to portray are presidents industrialists artists thinkers
entertainers soldiers spies criminals and evangelists
among others and he makes the life of each individual
serve as a framework for a discussion of the nation as a
whole in a century when it was reinventing itself. Through
Theodore Roosevelt Walker examines Americas ambition;
through Woodrow Wilson our idealism; through FDR our
triumph on the world stage; through Richard Nixon our
retreat into cynicism; through Bill Clinton globalization
and controversy about the right way to use Americas
unprecedented power. In Henry Ford he finds the creator of
both the mass-market product and the mass-market consumer
and in Walt Disney the revolutionizer not only of Americas
entertainment but also of the worlds. William Boeing is
the innovator who spurs the behemoth of American aviation;
Walter Reuther defines labors struggles; George C.
Marshall represents the spread of Americas economic genius
in a war-ravaged Europe. In the lives of Duke Ellington
Frank Lloyd Wright Katharine Hepburn and John Steinbeck
Walker traces Americas far-reaching cultural influences.
Babe Ruth leads to a consideration of the role of sports
in our society; William F. Buckley Jr. to a discussion of
conservatism; Martin Luther King Jr. to matters of race;
Betty Friedan to the shifting role of women; Billy Graham
to an examination of religion; Emma Goldman to minority
viewpoints and dissent; Black Jack Pershing to the place
of the military; Lucky Luciano to crime and corruption;
Albert Einstein to immigration; Richard Bissell to spies
and the intelligence network; Alan Greenspan to finance
and banking; and Winston Churchill to the American
diaspora. At once intimate and wide-ranging America Reborn
is an altogether engrossing work of narrative history.