Product Description

In his provocative and compelling new book, America’s most widely read and most influential commentator casts his gimlet eye on our singular nation. Moving far beyond the strict confines of politics, George F. Will offers a fascinating look at the people, stories, and events–often unheralded–that make the American drama so endlessly entertaining and instructive.

With Will’s signature erudition and wry wit always on display, One Man’s America chronicles a spectacular, eclectic procession of figures who have shaped our cultural landscape–from Playboy founder Hugh Hefner to National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., from Victorian poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from cotton picker— turned—country singer Buck Owens to actor-turned-president Ronald Reagan.

Will crisscrosses the country to illuminate what it is that makes America distinctive. He visits the USS Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor and ponders its enduring links to the present. He travels to Milwaukee to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of an iconic brand, Harley-Davidson. In Los Angeles he finds the inspiring future of education, while in New York he confronts the dispiriting didacticism of the avant-garde. He ventures to the Civil War battlefields of Virginia to explore what we risk when we efface our own history. And on the outskirts of Chicago he investigates one of the darkest chapters in American history, only to discover a shining example of resilience and grace–the best the country has to offer.

Will’s wide lens takes in much more as well–everything from the “most emblematic novel of the 1930s” (and no, it is not about the Joads) to the cult of ESPN to Brooks Brothers and Ben & Jerry’s. And of course, One Man’s America would not be complete without the author’s insights on the national pastime, baseball–the icons and the cheats, the hapless and the greats.

Finally, in a personal and reflective turn, Will writes movingly of his thirty-five-year-old son Jon, born with Down syndrome, and pays loving and poignant tribute to his mother, who died at the age of ninety-eight after a long struggle with dementia.

The essays in One Man’s America, even when critiquing American culture, reflect Will’s deep affection and regard for our nation. After all, he notes, when America falls short, it does so only as compared to “the uniquely high standards it has set for itself.” In the end, this brilliantly informative and entertaining book reminds us of the enduring value of “the simple virtues and decencies that can make communities flourish and that have made America great and exemplary.”

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #113420 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-03
• Released on: 2008-06-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Pulitzer Prize–winner Will (Men at Work) serves up an engaging compilation of his columns and reviews from the past five years. Touching lightly on the Bush administration and heavily upon American history, good government, obituaries and baseball among other less schismatic topics, Will is at his most colorful when describing the intrigues and absurdities of great figures in American political history—FDR setting the price of gold from his bed, Churchill imperiously ordering bacon and alcohol from White House staff. Will is, in the late William Buckley's words, the consummate conservative high-priest, who favors historical analogy and tasteful argumentation to partisan moralizing. The columns are uniformly excellent, but they are short-lived pleasures and can become disposable when read one after another—even the grouping by genre cannot obviate this—and these essays would have been better served had they been arranged chronologically. Nevertheless, this is a rewarding book, offering all the riches of a writer in full control of his medium and with plenty to tell. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
In his eighth collection of writings, with the benefit of his characteristic wit and style and a 40-year-career as a columnist, Will offers a broad, insightful, and affectionate look at American culture. He is ecumenical in his admiration of iconic American figures: Daniel Patrick Moynihan is remembered as a Sisyphus “forever pushing uphill a boulder of inconvenient data” and Milton Friedman as the nation’s most “consequential public intellectual of the twentieth century.” Predictably, Will lambastes absurdities committed by liberals—the city of Oakland charging as hate speech an effort to promote heterosexual marriage as the foundation of the “natural family”—but also takes conservatives to task. Will is skeptical of big idea conservatism and nostalgia for Ronald Reagan as a substitute for thinking. In this collection, Will turns his attention mostly to the incredible array of ideas and notions of American life—consumerism, religious fervor, commercial vitality—and so conveys the energy and vibrancy of American culture, society, economy, and politics. In pithy commentary on culture, Will is admiring of the endurance of Harley-Davidson and Brooks Brothers, and critical of political correctness on university campuses and elsewhere. Will’s greatest rhapsody is reserved for sports, particularly his beloved baseball. Will blends journalism, history, philosophy, and analysis so gracefully that readers of any political stripe must admire his effort and his art. --Vanessa Bush

About the Author
GEORGE F. WILL writes a twice-weekly column that is syndicated in more than 450 newspapers, as well as a back-page column in Newsweek that runs biweekly. He also appears each Sunday on the ABC News program This Week. The author of twelve other books, Will is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary and the Bradley Prize for Outstanding Intellectual Achievement. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Customer Reviews

Thoughtful, insightful, lots of big words
I enjoyed One Man's America for its insight, and because George Will refuses to allow readers to be lazy. I must admit, though, that it often seems like he just swallowed a thesaurus, that he's never met a compound adjective he didn't like. "No vulgarity is unthinkable now that the Holocaust has become fodder for semi-intellectual wisecracks," he writes, "the plaything of theory-weaving and ax-grinding academic and artistic mediocrities who discern a moral equivalence between commercial advertising and Nuremberg rallies."

Of course, I'm comparing that to my own writing, which usually doesn't ponder the theory-weaving of much beyond My Disney Girl's Perfectly Princess Tea Party. But I digress.

Will's smart stories give readers much to think about.

Although proudly lacking the common touch, his essays are often about the common man. The stories in this collection cover a wide range of topics, including baseball pitcher Greg Maddux, the movie United 93, atrocities of the Holocaust, the messy birth of aviation and the similarities between the Pearl Harbor attack and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The last two essays in the book are personal and touching: Will talks about his 35-year-old son Jon, born with Down Syndrome, and the death of his mother Louise at age 98.

I don't usually share Will's politics, but I have always admired his writing, and this generally apolitical book was a pure pleasure to read. I should note, however, that many of the 138 stories may seem familiar. All but seven are reprints, originally published in Newsweek and the Washington Post.

Here's the chapter list:

1. People
2. Paths to the Present
3. Governing
4. Sensibilities and Sensitivities
5. Learning
6. Games
7. The Game
8. Wondering
9. Matters of Life and Death

America Through Conservative Eyes
"One Man's America" focuses not on the large events of the first years of the 21st century, but rather how a conservative sensibility reacts to smaller matters. While doing so he also provides an entertaining and instructive unfolding of the American story.

Will's work begins with people (William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, John F. Kennedy, etc.), and then on to various topics such as "The Amazing Banality of Flight," "Ed Schools vs. Education," and of course, an entire chapter on baseball. It ends, with a brief summary of his son's life with Down's Syndrome, and his mother's long dying with dementia. Throughout, it is thoughtful.

What I find most attractive about George Will, however, is not his intelligent, conservative perspectives, but his never-ceasing objectivity. Sometimes conservatives are just plain stupid, and when that is the case, George Will is the first to say so.

Another Great Collection of Writings from Will
This is the eighth collection of George Will's columns and other writings. The book is a great series of reflections on American life from 2002 to 2008.

"One Man's America" is a treasure trove of columns on historical figures, politics, history, the culture, sports (especially Will's beloved baseball), education, and science. He has a couple of great columns on the recently departed William F. Buckley, and his year-end columns and his columns about books are especially enjoyable.

Will is a national treasure. He is so learned, and has a staggering amount of background knowledge, that he manages to drop numerous unfamiliar facts about familiar people and incidents into his columns, which means that the columns must surely be educational for even the most well-informed D.C. insider. You may not agree with him on every issue, but to read George Will is not to spend time--it is to invest time.