political spectrum. It’s why a public scold like William Bennett could writea tome called
The Book of Virtues
, in which he describes the essential qualities of all “good men and women.” John Adams could have written that book, because that book gets written every generation.
McGuffey’s Eclectic Reader
, a collection of patriotic piffle and accounts of civic virtue, was its name a century and a half ago.
When Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote a book called
The Cycles of American History
, he tried to define this movement as some variation between American political liberalism and conservatism and happening every generation or so. His father, Arthur Schlesinger Sr., had a similar theory but crunched different numbers, computing a turn of the wheel every sixteen and a half years. Others had different time frames. Karl Mannheim put it at fifteen years. Henry Adams conjectured a turn every twelve years. De Tocqueville played it safe: “Among democratic nations,” he wrote, “each generation is a new people.” All of them were making a Freudian argument—that the time more or less coincides with the period of time it takes for one generation to age enough that it gets its head handed to it by the next one coming up. None of these cycles work out, because history doesn’t play by the clock. But switch out the idea from one of
time
to one of
creativity
and it works a little better.
It’s knee-jerk to believe that American history is a linear progression. For a long time in the past, it was arguably true—our narrative rolled along with the folks from the east as they pushed west. In 1893, the historian Frederick Turner wondered in an essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” if the closing of the American frontier would change the nation. Americans have answered his question by proving themselves over and over again capable of finding all kinds of new frontiers to invade, settle, and abandon—disastrously sometimes (the Philippines, Vietnam, Iraq), often beautifully (the North Pole, the moon, the ocean), even virtually (radio, Hollywood, cyberspace). From time to time, we go so far as to demand from our President that he find us a new frontier to swarm.
In American culture, the cycle of amateurs clawing at the walls of professionalism has no fixed origin or duration. One can find it playing out continuously. The two need each other, feed on each other, and in the mythic course of American time—given new costumes, new eras, new characters—find themselves squaring off over and over again. In 1987, Allen Ginsberg (radical poet, destroyer of tradition, and nude protester) confessed in an interview that he admired his lifelong nemesis: conventional writer, defender of tradition, and clothed intellectual Norman Podhoretz. Ginsberg said that he didn’t know what he would do without him. Ginsberg and Podhoretz had gone to school together, dreamed of becoming poets together, and set off with their ambitions together. Podhoretz, though, recoiled at the amateur improvisations of the beat poets and retreated to the fortress of tradition. From there, he hurled invective at Ginsberg for the rest of their lives. But Ginsberg confessed that he needed the unmovable whetstone of Podhoretz’s intransigent tradition to sharpen himself against. “If he weren’t there like a wall I can butt my head against,” he said, sounding very much like a certain bespectacled founding father, “I wouldn’t have anybody to hate.”
3
THE TRUTH ABOUT BIRDS
I. The Biggest Story in the World
ne morning I got a call from a friend inside the Nature Conservancy who asked me, first off, if I could keep an incredibly huge secret. We all know the answer to that question.
Breathlessly, he told me that his organization was sitting on one of the most amazing stories in history and would I be interested? I’m not sure I even got to answer that one. He immediately told me that a team was on the ground in a primeval cypress
The Book of Virtues
, in which he describes the essential qualities of all “good men and women.” John Adams could have written that book, because that book gets written every generation.
McGuffey’s Eclectic Reader
, a collection of patriotic piffle and accounts of civic virtue, was its name a century and a half ago.
When Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote a book called
The Cycles of American History
, he tried to define this movement as some variation between American political liberalism and conservatism and happening every generation or so. His father, Arthur Schlesinger Sr., had a similar theory but crunched different numbers, computing a turn of the wheel every sixteen and a half years. Others had different time frames. Karl Mannheim put it at fifteen years. Henry Adams conjectured a turn every twelve years. De Tocqueville played it safe: “Among democratic nations,” he wrote, “each generation is a new people.” All of them were making a Freudian argument—that the time more or less coincides with the period of time it takes for one generation to age enough that it gets its head handed to it by the next one coming up. None of these cycles work out, because history doesn’t play by the clock. But switch out the idea from one of
time
to one of
creativity
and it works a little better.
It’s knee-jerk to believe that American history is a linear progression. For a long time in the past, it was arguably true—our narrative rolled along with the folks from the east as they pushed west. In 1893, the historian Frederick Turner wondered in an essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” if the closing of the American frontier would change the nation. Americans have answered his question by proving themselves over and over again capable of finding all kinds of new frontiers to invade, settle, and abandon—disastrously sometimes (the Philippines, Vietnam, Iraq), often beautifully (the North Pole, the moon, the ocean), even virtually (radio, Hollywood, cyberspace). From time to time, we go so far as to demand from our President that he find us a new frontier to swarm.
In American culture, the cycle of amateurs clawing at the walls of professionalism has no fixed origin or duration. One can find it playing out continuously. The two need each other, feed on each other, and in the mythic course of American time—given new costumes, new eras, new characters—find themselves squaring off over and over again. In 1987, Allen Ginsberg (radical poet, destroyer of tradition, and nude protester) confessed in an interview that he admired his lifelong nemesis: conventional writer, defender of tradition, and clothed intellectual Norman Podhoretz. Ginsberg said that he didn’t know what he would do without him. Ginsberg and Podhoretz had gone to school together, dreamed of becoming poets together, and set off with their ambitions together. Podhoretz, though, recoiled at the amateur improvisations of the beat poets and retreated to the fortress of tradition. From there, he hurled invective at Ginsberg for the rest of their lives. But Ginsberg confessed that he needed the unmovable whetstone of Podhoretz’s intransigent tradition to sharpen himself against. “If he weren’t there like a wall I can butt my head against,” he said, sounding very much like a certain bespectacled founding father, “I wouldn’t have anybody to hate.”
3
THE TRUTH ABOUT BIRDS
I. The Biggest Story in the World
ne morning I got a call from a friend inside the Nature Conservancy who asked me, first off, if I could keep an incredibly huge secret. We all know the answer to that question.
Breathlessly, he told me that his organization was sitting on one of the most amazing stories in history and would I be interested? I’m not sure I even got to answer that one. He immediately told me that a team was on the ground in a primeval cypress
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