What does it mean to be an American? Historian Daniel J. Boorstin, Librarian of Congress and one of the most important public intellectuals of the 20th century, spent a lifetime pondering that question. Stan’s guest this week is Boorstin’s son Jon Boorstin, a novelist and Oscar-nominated filmmaker, who discusses his new book, The American: The Hidden History of Daniel J. Boorstin and His Twentieth Century (University of Georgia Press). Jon tells the biographical story his father never told, going back to his grandfather Sam Boorstin, the youngest lawyer in Georgia’s history. After his good friend and fellow Atlantan Leo Frank was lynched in a notorious antisemitic incident, Sam moved his family to boomtown Tulsa, where Daniel was raised in the shadow of the infamous Tulsa Massacre of 1921. Jon also explores his father’s enduring friendship with the distinguished Black historian and fellow Tulsan John Hope Franklin, both unwavering proponents of the American Dream in the face of extraordinary prejudice.
