The Drawing of America: Eyewitnesses to History by Marshall B Davidson
 
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Language ‏ : ‎ English
Pages ‏ : ‎ 256 
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0810908077
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0810908079
 
The exemplary book of the year that combines art and history is Marshall B. Davidson's ''Drawing of America.'' Mr. Davidson has spent a lifetime sorting out the images that best tell American history. Many of the drawings collected here should find their way into the pages of both scholarly and popular books for as long as the Republic stands. I was especially struck by a ballroom for a theater in Richmond proposed in 1797 by America's first professional architect, Benjamin Latrobe. Here is colonial taste on a level with almost anything to be seen in Europe, a vision of a cultural center 150 years ahead of itself. ''Had it materialized,'' Mr. Davidson writes, ''this handsome edifice, with its assembly rooms, hotel, and theater . . . would have been one of the most distinguished architectural complexes of the time.'' Karl Bodmer's paintings of the West of the 1830's, especially his ''White Castles on the Missouri River,'' constitute a superb pictorial record of Western exploration and settlement. Another example of a loving link between art and history is George Harvey's 1840 ''Portland Pier, Lake Erie,'' showing travelers scurrying to catch a paddle-wheeler. See too Harvey's rainbow-dominated but realistic view of ''Boston Common From Charles Street Mall'' (1835-40); it is the Puritans' City on a Hill come true.
 
Mr. Davidson's text, although concentrating on America as seen by artists, actually provides as good a short history of the United States as any to be found in the libraries. If I wished to give an educated European a book about this country without seeming to be presumptuous (but realizing how little he or she probably knows of our history), this is the one I'd choose. Come to think of it, it's also the one I'd choose for my friends. AN ALBUM FOR AMERICANS A Treasury of American Patriotism.