This Noble Land: My Vision for America

by James A. Michener, Steve Berry (Introduction)

Overview

In such modern classics as Chesapeake, Centennial, Hawaii, Alaska, and Texas, James A. Michener proved time and again that his understanding of and love for his country was unparalleled. This Noble Land is Michener’s most personal statement about America, an examination of the issues that threaten to fragment and undermine the nation—racial conflict, the widening gulf between rich and poor, the decline of education, the inadequacies of our health care system—as well as a thought-provoking prescription for sustaining our “outstanding success.” Infused with the wisdom and passion of a lifetime, This Noble Land stands as a wake-up call for a troubled era.
 
Praise for This Noble Land
 
“A book-length essay on the often worrying, often inspiring course of America in the nine decades of Michener’s life.”—The Washington Post
 
“Michener is more interested in fixing the problems than in fixing the blame.”—The Dallas Morning News
 
“Michener’s are the beach books that, unlike most other beach books, leave you smarter than you were when you started reading. Each delivers the product of all that research, doled out to the reader at just the right rate. You know right away who the bad guys are—the petty ones, the stingy ones. The heroes are generous and energetic and smart and, above all, unprejudiced. The real-life villains in This Noble Land are the people Michener perceives as ‘petty, mean and vengeful.’”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
 
“Stirring . . . an admirable effort to define what has made our country great and how to preserve what is best about it.”—Kirkus Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780449226117
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/04/1997
Edition description:	1 BALLANTI
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	88,703
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

James A. Michener was one of the world’s most popular writers, the author of more than forty books of fiction and nonfiction, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tales of the South Pacific, the bestselling novels The Source, Hawaii, Alaska, Chesapeake, Centennial, Texas, Caribbean, and Caravans, and the memoir The World Is My Home. Michener served on the advisory council to NASA and the International Broadcast Board, which oversees the Voice of America. Among dozens of awards and honors, he received America’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977, and an award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 1983 for his commitment to art in America. Michener died in 1997 at the age of ninety.

Date of Birth:

February 3, 1907

Date of Death:

October 16, 1997

Place of Death:

Austin, Texas

Education:

B.A. in English and history (summa cum laude), Swarthmore College, 1929; A.M., University of Northern Colorado, 1937.

Editorial Reviews

A book-length essay on the often worrying, often inspiring course of America in the nine decades of Michener’s life.”—The Washington Post
 
“Michener is more interested in fixing the problems than in fixing the blame.”—The Dallas Morning News
 
“Michener’s are the beach books that, unlike most other beach books, leave you smarter than you were when you started reading. Each delivers the product of all that research, doled out to the reader at just the right rate. You know right away who the bad guys are—the petty ones, the stingy ones. The heroes are generous and energetic and smart and, above all, unprejudiced. The real-life villains in This Noble Land are the people Michener perceives as ‘petty, mean and vengeful.’”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
 
“Stirring . . . an admirable effort to define what has made our country great and how to preserve what is best about it.”—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

The 88-year-old Michener here reflects on what he believes to be the major problems the U.S. faces and offers suggestions on how to solve them. He presents a moderate and humane vision, advising increased federal spending on education, the arts and health care. In one particularly thoughtful essay, he discusses the erosion of race relations and argues passionately for the necessity of affirmative action. He is a believer in the moral value of work and the traditional family. However, he strongly disagrees with what he sees as punitive financial measures against teenage mothers proposed by the Republican Congress. To redistribute the nation's wealth, Michener supports a sharp increase in income taxes on the wealthy. Michener's writing throughout is straightforward and congenial, informed by myriad personal examples and energized by the passion of his hopes and fears for his beloved country. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Venerable American novelist Michener offers his reflections on the current state of the United States and his recommendations for solving the problems he sees. His 13 criteria indicative of a nation's nobility are carefully and intelligently chosen, though idiosyncratic. Although Michener avoids media-driven flavor-of-the-month issues, it is difficult to consider a book on contemporary issues complete when it barely mentions the environment, immigration, the trade deficit, or abortion. However, the book's best moments are not ideological but personal observations on the nation's problems. Each chapter ends with a series of recommendations, which are rarely persuasive but seem mostly a tepid mlange of meliorism and wishful thinking and only reinforce the melancholy induced by Michener's eloquent delineation of the nation's woes. Perhaps Michener himself senses this, for in the final chapter he predicts another half-century of American greatness followed by a murkier outlook. Not strictly an essential purchase, but this moving book will serve as a starting point for many a discussion group and term paper.Fritz Buckallew, Univ. of Central Oklahoma Lib., Edmond

Library Journal

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.

Kirkus Reviews