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"  The most recent turn of the century was a considerable letdown, especially by millennial standards, which are considerable, but also by the standards set by the turn of the last century. Jim Rasenberger&amp;#039;s America 1908 (Scribner, $27) illustrates this in sharp relief. Using the fractal view of one remarkable year, he shows a country staggering, blinking into a century that it will come to dominate, the seeds of that domination already sprouting into gaudy blossoms in a dozen different directions. Here&amp;#039;s Teddy Roosevelt, frustrated that he can&amp;#039;t have a third term as president, grumping about the succession of that unremarkable barge of a man, William Howard Taft. There&amp;#039;s Henry Ford, inventing the Model T, thereby setting the country on the road that would lead to oil shocks and drive-in movie theaters and rock &amp;#039;n&amp;#039; roll. There&amp;#039;s a whole passel of crazy people trying to be the first ones to the North Pole and around the world. Rasenberger fills in the spaces between the big events and important people with smaller, no less significant stories. A horrific race riot swirls around Abraham Lincoln&amp;#039;s grave in Springfield, Illinois. Young women go strolling clad in scandalously clingy &amp;quot;sheath&amp;quot;-style dresses from Paris, causing a young British gentleman on horseback to collide with another rider. Fortunately for the rest of the century, Winston Churchill survives this fetlock bender. And, finally, there are the Wright brothers, taking the country and the world into the air for the rest of time. Rasenberger&amp;#039;s at his best describing their long, laborious, and unremittingly dangerous efforts, and, in doing so, he breathes new life into Wilbur and Orville, who too often are reckoned in history to be the same person. (Orville, it turns out, was the true daredevil of the two.) Compared with all that, what did the year 2000 bring us? A really big Ferris wheel in London, reality TV, and the Bush administration. They don&amp;#039;t make centuries like they used to. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a3502/america1107/>