MAKERS OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY by Martin Walker (Vintage) probes the lives of twenty-six Americans-from Teddy Roosevelt to Henry Ford, Babe Ruth to Duke Ellington, Lucky Lucia no to Martin Luther King and the rest of the list whose contributions to the rise and evolution of a country by now is only legendary. The book tells us the highs and lows of a fascinating nation, just as it explores the American dominance in the last hundred years. It is a thrilling portrait of some of the great lives of America. But what makes it more fascinating is Walker’s judicious choice of the personalities.Walker has been extremely perceptive while writing the book as also he indulges in lucid prose. His meticulous research has resulted in a book that is not only revealing but makes a thought-provoking read. For Walker “this has been the wondrous contradictions of the American experience”.
The range and the depth of the coverage are astonishing. But that is not surprising given the fact that Walker has traveled across the whole of America in different capacities and with different assignments. Walker himself says in the introduction, “America has been, throughout my life, a country that has known the best of times and the worst of times, sometimes almost simultaneously.”For Walker America is not only “paradoxical”, the paradoxes are also “surreal.” Asks he: how could a country embrace such extremes of wealth and poverty? If it has a million- and- half law graduates, it has an equal number of fellow citizens behind bars.If it is a Mecca for foreigners pursuing master’s degrees and doctorates it withstands a flawed public school system with almost a fifth of the turnouts to be functional illiterates. And, he himself has the answer. Quoting Gore Vidal, Walker compels us to believe that the American system needs a constant threatening and warning – (that) success and achievement is always failure- induced. Vidal’s oft-quoted lines: It is not enough to succeed .Others must fail.
Walker argues that America’s global role over the past century was rather a forced one. The bombing by Japan in 1941,the British warningofAmericato remain in Europeor else face the expansionistthreats of Stalin’s Soviet empireandstanding bythe East Germans,Hungarians,Czechs and Polesagainst their Soviet masters all point out to itsnon-instinctive character of hegemony and good-valuedethics. Walker is convinced that “its assumption of global power was as spasmodic as it was hesitant. It unfolded only under explicitly moralistic and usually utopian banners, from the war to end wars to the defense of the Free World and the expansion of the Four Freedoms and free markets”.Although America’s dominance orwhat ithascome to be known as the ‘hyper power’ is centered around wealth, military powerand advanced technologies, Walker insists that cultural and commercial influences apart, it was the democratic systemof free speech that put thismultifacetednation ahead of other civilizations.
But,then, Americans have also witnessed repeated failures. The bloody draw in Korea, defeat in Vietnam and a standoff with Cuba are seen asresults of a fierce public opinion andwhat Walker philosophizes:principled conviction that America was differently foundedand more honorably directedthan the traditional great powersof Europe with their realpolitik and empires of exploitation. Walker’s 400-paged book assumes still more importance for its insights into not only the great personalities but also America’s economic history, political struggles and its diplomacy.
The key to understand America’s history, however, is in the realm of immigrants- from Europe to Asia and their increasing sway on America’s way of life in the twenty first century. But the reverse is also true: the idiosyncratic American influence of “working with Windows 95 on an IBM clone, eating at McDonald’s, drinking Pepsi, staying in touch through CNN,relaxing to Hollywood entertainment, and paying for it all on American Express”.
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