The History of the Future: American Essays

by Edward McPherson

Overview

Essays on America’s changing environment from an author who is “funny and searching—a joy to read” (Elizabeth Kolbert). What does it mean to think about Dallas, the city where JFK was shot, in relationship to Dallas, the show that just seventeen years later made “Who shot J.R.” a national catchphrase? This collection of essays looks at seven diverse American places and reexamines them in the light of history, experience, and myth. Taking on topics from private streets, racism, and the St. Louis World’s Fair to fracking for oil and digging for dinosaurs in North Dakota boomtowns, this book both warns about the dangers we face as a nation and “explores America in all its beauty and strangeness” (Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction). “In his energetic and incisive collection of essays, The History of the Future, McPherson thoughtfully examines seven markedly different American sites. In doing so, he zeros in on the manner in which cultural representation and the pull of nostalgia skewer our self-image at this critical juncture in American history, too often steering us away from our most pressing concerns. His often quirky study reveals the suppressed violence that ravages our communities’ social harmony as well as the environmental balance we so desperately need to preserve.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Taken together, this travelogue of the familiar and the strange exposes multiple anxieties latent in the national subconscious: racial inequalities, the dread of disaster, the chase after short-term profits, the eroding meaning of home. McPherson’s depth of research, the inventiveness of his prose, and his sensitivity to municipal undercurrents make this a first-rate work of social analysis.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “Edward McPherson’s meditations on the United States—from its soaring, vulnerable architecture to its deep underground tunnels—are bracing in their acknowledgment of what’s been lost to time and his anxieties about what’s ahead. This is a smart and beautifully written book about America.” —Rebecca Traister

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781566894760
Publisher:	Coffee House Press
Publication date:	04/10/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Edward McPherson is the author of two previous books: Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat (Faber&Faber) and The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats (HarperCollins). He has written for the New York Times Magazine, the Paris Review, Tin House, and the American Scholar, among others. He has received a Pushcart Prize, the Gulf Coast Prize in Fiction, a Minnesota State Arts Board grant, and the Gesell Award from the University of Minnesota, where he received his MFA. He teaches creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis.

Table of Contents

Echo Patterns
Lost and Found
Open Ye Gates! Swing Wide Ye Portals!
End of the Line
How to Survive an Atomic Bomb
Chasing the Boundary: Boom and Bust on the High Prairie
Three Minutes to Midnight

Editorial Reviews

02/20/2017
This collection of seven geography-themed essays from McPherson (The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Facts) is both an entertaining exploration of Americana and a critical look at how people form memories. His knowledge of esoteric and diverse topics, such as the intricate science behind the atom bomb and the pop culture phenomenon of the soap opera Dallas, is on display in each spiraling essay. The collection begins in Dallas, discussing how the assassination of J.F.K. looms over both the city and its eponymous TV show. In an essay on St. Louis, after a detailed description of the architecture behind the Gateway Arch monument, McPherson declares the “balance an illusion,” nodding to his theme of the illusory border separating past from present and history from future. The most searing and poignant essay of the collection is “Chasing the Boundary: Boom and Bust on the High Prairie,” which explores how North Dakota’s recent oil boom brought thousands of itinerant workers to an otherwise stark landscape. McPherson goes deep into his subject matter as well as into the land. He descends through a Brooklyn manhole into what is considered the world’s first subway, and into a contemporary bomb shelter in L.A. This collection brims with subdued, self-aware brilliance. Agent: Emma Parry, Janklow & Nesbit. (May)

Publishers Weekly

What does it mean to think about Dallas in relationship to Dallas ? In The History of the Future, McPherson reexamines American places and the space between history, experience, and myth. Private streets, racism, and the St. Louis World’s Fair; fracking for oil and digging for dinosaurs in North Dakota boomtowns—Americana slides into apocalypse in these essays, revealing us to ourselves.

Reviews

“This collection brims with subdued, self-aware brilliance.” —Publishers Weekly

“A lively, enlightening, and occasionally disturbing book that envisions the future as already broken.” — Kirkus Reviews

“A collection of impressively researched yet conversational essays about environmental degradation, place and time.” —The Guardian

“[ The History of the Future ] is a thoroughly American book after all, one of shocking kinetic force and cultural insight.” — The Los Angeles Review

“Taken together, this travelogue of the familiar and the strange exposes multiple anxieties latent in the national subconscious: racial inequalities, the dread of disaster, the chase after short-term profits, the eroding meaning of home. McPherson’s depth of research, the inventiveness of his prose, and his sensitivity to municipal undercurrents make this a first-rate work of social analysis.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“Like [T.S.] Eliot, McPherson has collected fragments from culture, history, and his life and used them to erect an edifice that points the way to—but, one hopes, in doing so might also help protect against—our ruin.” —Georgia Review

“Taking on our relationships with the places we’ve called home, our myths, our social biases, and our ecological concerns for the future, McPherson offers a soul-searching, though not bleak series of think pieces designed to get us all asking more questions.” — Booklist

“Edward’s essays dwell upon geographic locations and the human experience that spins out from them—with a not-insignificant focus on the consequences of human calamity in the form of nuclear threat, climate change and racism. The range from the more personal, spending time in Edward’s family home in Gettysburg, to the journalistic, with our fearless leader exploring the gas boomtowns of the Dakota plains and excavating dinosaur bones nearby.” —Essay Daily

“In his energetic and incisive collection of essays, The History of the Future, McPherson thoughtfully examines seven markedly different American sites. In doing so, he zeros in on the manner in which cultural representation and the pull of nostalgia skewer our self-image at this critical juncture in American history, too often steering us away from our most pressing concerns. His often quirky study reveals the suppressed violence that ravages our communities’ social harmony as well as the environmental balance we so desperately need to preserve.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“... journalism of the highest order– a book that courageously confronts the darkness and nihilism which are eroding the freedom and democracy America once stood for.” — Lively-arts

“It is . . . the perfect time for a book such as The History of the Future, which pulls no punches as it investigates the foibles of our nation through a series of eight warning essays. . . . [Edward] proves himself to be a master chronicler of our nation’s incongruous trajectory.” — Star Tribune

“ The History of the Future should be required reading for those who grapple with understanding our past.” —Heavy Feather Review

"What struck me most about these essays is how McPherson weaves past and present so beautifully." —Talk of Iowa

“Rather than wax nostalgic about a mythical Past-That-Never-Was, McPherson instead teases out the grand ambition of a bygone era, of a reach that far exceeded its grasp and designs for a future that never quote materialized as planned.” —Rain Taxi

“McPherson’s essays are everything essays should be: in love with the mundane, inquisitive, personal while still aimed at unpacking the wider world in new and interesting ways.” —NewPages

“Edward McPherson's The History of the Future: American Essays … is both enjoyable and educational. It also strongly positions itself within the framework of this golden age of the essay we're currently experiencing.” —Milkweed Books Blog

“ The History of the Future is a book of astonishments: in these essays we are taken on a series of journeys around America to half-secret places where the soul of the country is hidden away. Edward McPherson is a wonderful tour guide: intelligent, funny, and urbane, he never seems disconcerted by the everyday wonders he shows us. If you thought you knew America, read this book; you will find yourself surprised, dismayed, and delighted by the truths he has found and the stories he tells.” — Charles Baxter

“In The History of the Future, McPherson explores America in all its beauty and strangeness. He is funny and searching—a joy to read.” — Elizabeth Kolbert

“Edward McPherson’s meditations on the United States—from its soaring, vulnerable architecture to its deep underground tunnels—are bracing in their acknowledgment of what’s been lost to time and his anxieties about what’s ahead. This is a smart and beautifully written book about America.” — Rebecca Traister

From the Publisher

2017-02-13
Off to look for America.McPherson (Creative Writing/Washington Univ., St. Louis; The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats: A Newcomer's Journey into the World of Bridge, 2007, etc.) took the Paul Simon line, "gone to look for America," to heart when he was compiling this collection, in which he offers seven reflective essays that scrutinize and personally dissect different cities and parts of the U.S. In "Echo Patterns," Dallas, Texas, where the author grew up, a city that was "called forth in the minds of white men," is seen through three lenses: its history, the eponymous TV series, and the JFK assassination. It doesn't fare too well. "Lost and Found" is a rueful, autobiographical piece about the McPherson family home built by his great-great-grandfather in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1870. It's literally about the home and the many things in it, found, lost, and stolen: "Am I really writing about the past, or am I stealing it?" Then it's on to the author's current hometown, St. Louis, a "city of gates that do not normally swing wide." McPherson goes back and forth, juxtaposing the 1904 World's Fair with the current city, often ranked as America's most segregated. With terrible public schools, failed public housing, and high crime rates, it's "a city haunted, proud of its past but worried its best days are behind it." After a brief detour to another city the author lived in, New York, with its imposing, mystifying underground tunnels, he's off to Los Alamos and the site of the atomic bomb blast. "How to Survive an Atomic Bomb" is richly informative and unsettling, but the best essay is the longest, on the "blazing rigs, equipment, settlements, and gas flares of the North Dakota Miracle…a.k.a. Kuwait on the Prairie." It's a frightening profile of a land and people gone oil crazy. The final essay, about LA, is aptly titled "Three Minutes to Midnight." A lively, enlightening, and occasionally disturbing book that envisions the future as already broken.

Kirkus Reviews