The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination by Daniel J. Boorstin, Bernard Klein (Designed by)

From the Publisher

By piecing the lives of selected individuals into a grand mosaic, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Daniel J. Boorstin explores the development of artistic innovation over 3,000 years. A hugely ambitious chronicle of the arts that Boorstin delivers with the scope that made his Discoverers a national bestseller.

Publishers Weekly

Boorstin's companion volume to The Discoverers --a one-week PW bestseller and a BOMC main selection in cloth--chronicles 3000 years of artistic invention, while providing entertaining biographical profiles of Dante, Leonardo, Goethe, Ben Franklin, Picasso and dozens more. (Oct.)

Library Journal

While the ultimate subject of former Librarian of Congress Boorstin's encore to his best seller The Discoverers ( LJ 11/15/83) is the culture of the ``literate West,'' the great episodes/great persons theme justifies the grandiose subtitle. In this work of breadth and uncontested erudition, readers will almost assuredly find a topic or two outside their ken but invested here with vivid clarity. Most of the chapters are actually self-contained essays, many tours de force, but while these stories display a certain connectedness, there is little of the continuity and change that characterizes historical discourse. Boorstin's heroes include obvious choices but also baffling selections, e.g., Jacob Burckhardt, the man who defined the Renaissance in modern times. Women, specifically Virginia Woolf, are relegated to a single chapter of their own. He generally ignores ``low'' entertainment except when posterity has awarded it the imprimatur of high culture. Ironically, his account suggests the artist's quest for freedom in this world is a Western axiom, despite the McCarthy legacy. This is a very long but completely engrossing book that academic and public libraries must acquire.-- Scott H. Silver man, Bryn Mawr Coll. Lib., Pa.

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