The Seekers (Boorstin Trilogy) - Softcover

In his previous bestsellers, The Discoverers and The Creators, Daniel Boorstin first told brilliantly how we discovered the reality of our world, and then he celebrated man's achievements in the arts. He now turns to the great figures in history who sought meaning and purpose in our existence. Boorstin claims our Western culture has seen three epics of Seeking. First we had the heroic way of the prophets and philosophers - men like Moses and Job, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle as well as the communities of the early church universities and the Protestant Reformation - seeking salvation or truth from the god above or the reason within each one of us. Then came the age of communal seeking with Thucydides, Thomas More, Machiavelli and Voltaire pursuing civilization and the liberal spirit. Finally there was the age of the social sciences when men seemed ruled by the forces of history. Here are the absorbing stories of exceptional men such as Marx, Spengler, Toynbee, Carlyle, Emerson, Malraux, Bergson and Einstein. A wonderfully stimulating book bursting with anecdotes and information relating to the eternal questions that have preoccupied the thinking human since the beginning of time.

Daniel J Boorstin was born in 1914 and educated at Harvard, Yale, and Oxford. He is Librarian of Congress Emeritus, having directed the US national library from 1979-1987. He had previously been Director of the National Museum for History and Technology and of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. He taught at the University of Chicago for twenty-five years.