This Noble Land:: My Vision for America - Hardcover

Michener, James A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679451528 ISBN 13: 9780679451525

Publisher: Random House, 1996

Synopsis

Delving deeper than the newspaer headlines, James Michener--storyteller, historian, teacher, government advisor, traveler, and student of his own and other cultures--gives readers his evaluation of nine fundamental problems facing America, offering insights into how to solve them. Written in Michener's trademark intimate style--so loved by readers in his bestselling memoir The World Is My Home--this book is a must for all Americans in this election year.

About this title

From the Back Cover

er than the newspaer headlines, James Michener--storyteller, historian, teacher, government advisor, traveler, and student of his own and other cultures--gives readers his evaluation of nine fundamental problems facing America, offering insights into how to solve them. Written in Michener's trademark intimate style--so loved by readers in his bestselling memoir The World Is My Home--this book is a must for all Americans in this election year.

Reviews

In a stirring essay on America's past and future, octogenarian novelist Michener (The World is My Home, 1992, etc.) outlines his native land's strong and weak points, and his hopes and fears for America's future. Drawing on his travels, historical research, and experiences in politics, Michener cites numerous criteria for determining the country's strength: social and monetary stability, a political system that allows for an orderly transfer of power, an adequate health care system and effective schools and free libraries, adequate employment opportunities for the young, the existence of a tax system that balances wealth between rich and poor, the prevalence of churches that provide moral guidance, the existence of recreational and cultural opportunity, and equitable treatment of disparate ethnic groups. While acknowledging America's defects in some of these areas, the author characterizes the US as a country basically noble (that is, generous and courageous) in purpose and qualities, but he argues that several trends threaten to diminish America's nobility as a society. Although his analysis of the characteristics of a noble society may be controversial in some particulars, Michener will encounter little disagreement in his diagnosis of the US's principal problems: rising violence (he blames it on America becoming too much of a ``macho'' society), deteriorating families, a declining educational system, the shift from a producing to a consuming economy, declining health care, and ominously worsening racial relations. In his analysis of the results of the congressional elections of 1994, Michener rejects facile nostrums of the left and right in arguing that while some Republican ideas should be supported (like tort reform), many others should be opposed as undermining the nation. Among these are proposals to ban deficit spending, return a great deal of federal power to the states, and eliminate affirmative action programs. Not all will agree with the specifics of Michener's arguments; still, the author makes an admirable effort to define what has made our country great and how to preserve what is best about it. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Old enough to remember when public schools were not in crisis, families stayed intact, and liberal government was popular, Michener offers his diagnosis for what ails America. Plenty, he gloomily predicts, to the point that the country is courting a revolution by the year 2050. Why? Because race relations are horrible, the rich are too rich, the culture is macho and sports-mad, the government hasn't solved the health-care dilemma, and it doesn't spend enough on arts. He supports these positions in a rambling, anecdotal manner, railing about the Simpson trial, for example, or criticizing a few super-rich expatriates. But persuasion is probably not the venerable novelist's purpose here: this is more a personal declaration of faith in "legitimate liberalism," which for Michener amounts to traditional values of work, education, family, and patriotism as he learned them, all combined with Great Society^-style spending programs and affirmative action. No wonder, then, that Michener, once an active Democrat both as a candidate and as an electoral college voter, bitterly excoriates the Republicans' Contract with America. Those of like political views will applaud this effort, while fans of Michener's historical fiction will be curious enough to request it. Gilbert Taylor

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0679451528
• ISBN 13: 9780679451525
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256