This weekend I plan on reading Simon Schama's oxymoronically-titled, The American Future: A History. I find it somewhat suspect that it takes a Brit to defend Americanism to Americans, but nonetheless, Prof. Schama is wonderfully engaging in an oddball eclectic kind of way. I especially love the way he conflates time so that Aristotle, Cicero, and Shakespeare become contemporary conversationalists in the modern dialogue. Schama often says during interviews: "Cicero would not be happy with me right now..."--as if Cicero might actually catch wind of Schama's occasional counter-classical stances. I also find Schama to be refreshing in this Obama-maniacal zeitgeist: he said on Charlie Rose that we (as in Americans) tend to err on the side of hyperbole. Where we had a Cowboy President on one side of an election we have a Prince of Dreams on the other--testifying to the "overcorrected" and, dare I repeat myself, hyperbolic American self-consciousness.
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