Product Details

• Format: NTSC
• Region: All Regions
• Studio: Charlie Rose
• DVD Release Date: November 6, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B000KC8KSM
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #490,478 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

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4.0 out of 5 stars A dry searcher The Boorstin segment only, November 21, 2007

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Charlie Rose with Daniel Boorstin; Stanley Tucci, Lili Taylor, Steve Buscemi & Campbell Scott; Paul Anka (October 8, 1998) (DVD)

This is a review of the segment with Daniel Boorstin in which Charlie Rose speaks with him about his recently published book, " The Searchers". "The Searchers" is the concluding volume in a three -part historical exploration. The previous two volumes are "The Discoverers" and "The Creators". This is Boorstin's second grand trilogy, the first was 'The Americans'. Boorstin is one of those people whose works I read many years before. I remember well Prof. Cushing Strout of Cornell teaching Boorstin's work including his insight that the key to American civilization was 'in the building of a better mousetrap' i.e. those gradual small improvements which led to an overall increase in the level of material life and well- being.'
In the interval years I had read both 'The Creators' and 'The Discovers' These were subject of enormous interest and Boorstin's heart was in the right place. His mind I suspect was also. But his work lacks a dimension of emotional depth and power, and so is unlike that of his great hero, Gibbon.
Boorstin tells Rose about how he started out to be a lawyer and ended up as a historian. He replies to Rose's query as to what he considers himself primarily to be and says that he is first of all a writer, a historian. He says that while only few human beings can be 'discoverers' or ' creators' we can all be searchers.
Again Boorstin's heart and head are in the right place, but there is something bland and dry in his work and in fact in his personality.
There is no excitement, no sense of adventure of discovery in this interview. And in fact it ends just at the point where it starts to be interesting where Boorstin begins to talk in depth about 'The Searchers'.