Presents an obituary of Daniel J. Boorstin (1914-2004). Boorstin graduated from Harvard University, studied as a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, and received a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from Yale Law School. He taught at the University of Chicago from 1944 to 1969 and became director of the Smithsonian's Museum of History and Technology in 1969 and the senior historian in 1973. In 1975 he became the 12th Librarian of Congress, retiring in 1987. A proliferate writer, his first major trilogy, 'The Americans,' was published between 1958 and 1973. The three volumes of his second trilogy on the history of the world were published between 1983 and 1998. Boorstin was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1969.