Daniel J. Boorstin was the author of The Americans, a trilogy (The Colonial Experience, The National Experience, and The Democratic Experience) that won the Francis Parkman Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1989, he received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters for his lifetime contribution to literature. He was the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and for twelve years served as the Librarian of Congress. He died in 2004.