Book Description
The “German question” haunts the modern world: How could so civilized a nation be responsible for the greatest horror in Western history? In this unusual fusion of personal memoir and history, the celebrated scholar Fritz Stern refracts the question through the prism of his own life. Born in the Weimar Republic, exposed to five years of National Socialism before being forced into exile in 1938 in America, he became a world-renowned historian whose work opened new perspectives on the German past.
Stern brings to life the five Germanys he has experienced: Weimar, the Third Reich, postwar West and East Germanys, and the unified country after 1990. Through his engagement with the nation from which he and his family fled, he shows that the tumultuous history of Germany, alternately the strength and the scourge of Europe, offers political lessons for citizens everywhere—especially those facing or escaping from tyranny. In this wise, tough-minded, and subtle book, Stern, himself a passionately engaged citizen, looks beyond Germany to issues of political responsibility that concern everyone. Five Germanys I Have Known vindicates his belief that, at its best, history is our most dramatic introduction to a moral civic life.
Customer Reviews:
Outstanding!!.......2007-10-02
The question for Western European Civilization is how to understand that a cultural tradition that brought us Plato, Michaelangelo, Brahms, Bach, etc also brought us Hitler, Stalin, and Nazism. This book adumbrates the shape that an answer to that question might take. Stern interweaves his own personal family story of life in Germany with his extraordinary knowledge of German history and culture. Each of the personal, cultural, and historical insights mutually enrich and enhance the others. If you have an interest in this topic I can't recommend this book any more highly. I was almost late for work one morning as I was engrossed in it.
It's more of a memoir than a history..........2007-09-09
It has more splashes of personal color than any real history has a right to. One should not take the history here *too* seriously.
Before I go further, Geoff Pietsch's review is the best one here.
While I enjoyed the language and prose, especially in the first 2/3rds of the book, the author is somewhat sloppy about noting people without explaining the context of their personalities. There was alot to find out about how people like his family operated in the period before the 1930s. And much of what he wrote about moving to America and getting established as a historian was pretty cool.
The flaws were pretty big, though. The last third of the book took me three weeks to read, when the first 2/3rds took me about two weeks. The author starts name-dropping like heck and the book begins to ramble from minutia to minutia. Although the self-portrait is a liberal, when I read and conceptualized the book as a whole, I got the strong sense that Stern was like some Jewish people who's conceptualization of the holocaust was that, well, "We're White Too". I don't think he's particularly racist, but there was not a little conveyed discomfort in his chapter on china, or about his involvement in dealing with student radicalism (which sometimes involved african american issues). Moreover his visits to the global south was conspicuous in the absence of dusky latinos in most places or blacks in Brasil. Lastly, he seems to have had relations with very few people who weren't of the tippy top social crust, and he apparently took pride in that as well. By the end, I was wondering what his reaction would be if I (black man) showed up in his garden. I concluded that he was something like a more liberal analogue of Kissinger, who didn't really believe in much of the world besides the US and Europe. I was left with the feeling that I would enjoy the company of Robert Rubin, Neidermayer, Oppenheimer, or George Soros (biographies of succesfull jewish people I've read) more than I would Fritz Stern. One really should stop when one gets to the China chapter, and you'll have gotten what is best about this book.
Finally, the context. It is my belief that Fritz Stern wrote this book to help bring together the US and Germany and repair much of the damage done by the Bush Administration. He also seems to want to encourage Germany to adopt a more american neoliberal stance. He definitly wanted to have Germany and rest of Europe together under the same Atlanticist umbrella. In those lights, it is not a surprise that there is a lot of russo-phobia in the book. Subtle, but there. I began to wonder if he doesn't realize that Germany has to have a Russia policy independent of the US's aegis due to strong economic ties and geopolitical realities. It would contradict his Bismark expertise (Bismark's Russia policy was aimed at drawing it out of France's orbit and securing his rear for all of his quick victories).
It is certainly not a worthless book for all of it's faults. Just know that it does have serious contextual faults for all of the Babbits (bourgousie philistines) out there.
A must for anyone curious about German Jewish history.......2007-09-01
Written with avuncular charm, "Five Germany's I Have Known" serves simultaneously as an overview of German history from the time of the Kaiser through to the reunification, and in-fact beyond (Stern worked at the American Embassy in Germany during the beginning of the Clinton administration); and as a personal memoir of a first-class academic and intellectual who was intimately connected to the history he was studying. Although at times he can be overly ponderous, and as memoir, it is really a memoir of the intellect more than of life (the dissolution of his marriage and quick re-marriage is given less detail than the composition of various West German cabinets), the book's virtues far outweigh any criticisms.
The history of modern Germany through the eyes of a person.......2007-08-09
whose family lived through it. Actually this remarkable book is more like a biography of the Stern family which is quite fascinating. Stern uses his personal experiences, and those of his family, friends, and colleagues, to provide a unique perspective on Germany history during those turbulent times. A very interesting read and one that speaks well for humanity, forgiveness, and self-assessment as well as analysis of the political and historical events in Germany.
The refugee returns as guru.......2007-08-07
This book is a fusion of the personal life of Stern and his family and of the history of the country in which he was born and from which they emigrated to the United States in 1938. The history of Germany up to 1945 is told in a workmanlike and rather dry manner. Soaked as we are in this history already, we can read that elsewhere. We hear of the personal experiences during the Nazi period of acculturated and patriotic German Jews (both Stern's parents, though of Jewish origin, had been baptized as children at the end of the 19th century); but these, too, have been the subject of countless books. Although Stern's father, grandfathers and the circle of friends were distinguished medical men and scientists, they may not be of the same absorbing interest to the reader as they are to the author, especially if, as here, the author does not really bring them to life, so that they remain mere names. The book becomes more interesting after the first 130 pages which cover the period from 1871 to 1938 and are concerned mostly with the older generations; for the author himself was just seven years old when the Nazis came to power, and just 12 when the family emigrated.
But the child's experience of life in Nazi Germany had been unpleasant enough, and they made Stern aware of politics at an age when children in more fortunate lands are unlikely to concern themselves with such matters. In the United States, from his schooldays onwards, Stern began to speak and write on politics. He attributes his liberalism (his opposition to communism and also to McCarthyism) to what he had learnt from the deprivation of liberty in Nazi Germany. In due course he became a prolific organizer of petitions and resolutions against authoritarianism wherever he found it, determined not to be like those intellectuals who had kept silent during the Nazi period. And he was a severe critic of American foreign policy, of its reliance on military force, and of the neo-conservatives.
On graduating, Stern had become a historian at Columbia University, and had focussed increasingly on German history. Immediately after the war, while detesting the Nazis, he knew that there had been a democratic Germany which the Nazis had overwhelmed but whose roots could surely be nourished. I recognize, as someone who has had similar experiences, the mixed feelings with which he first went back to Germany on a lecture tour in 1954, aware that many Germans had lived in an inner emigration during the Nazi period, but wondering about the past of so many Germans who claimed never to have been Nazis; feeling a sense of virtue as a representative of democracy, and relishing that he was returning as an American and under American auspices and protection. He continues, of course, with his narrative history of Germany, and this becomes more interesting after 1945 - in part because our schools and universities pay so little attention to it (compared with the emphasis on Nazi and pre-Nazi Germany) and also because the adult Stern has more first-hand and detailed experience of it than he had of the earlier period.
The varying views of German academics he reports in a series of anecdotes reveal the many-faceted nature of German reactions to their past, ranging from the aggrieved and insensitive to a full-hearted acceptance of the indelible stain of Nazism. He is good at discussing the several debates between Germans about their own past: in the 1960s about Germany's responsibility for the First World War (the Fischer controversy), in which Stern himself took part, essentially on Fischer's side; in the 1980s about the so-called Historikerstreit, triggered by Nolte's attempts to relativize Nazi atrocities by presenting them as reactions to earlier Soviet atrocities; and in the 1990s about Goldhagen's unscholarly attack on the entire German nation as having been `Hitler's Willing Executioners', which Stern vehemently critiqued.
The five Germanies of the title are pre-Nazi Germany, Nazi Germany, the GDR, the DDR (where Stern was allowed to consult historical archives), and Reunited Germany; but stretches of the book have nothing to do with any of these: there is, for example, a long passage on the 1968 student revolt at Columbia University and Stern's attitude towards it: sympathetic towards the students' grievances, strongly critical of their bullying methods. And there is a chapter of 58 pages which, though not without interest, is attached to the German question by the thinnest of threads or no threads at all; but they give Stern the excuse for including accounts of his travels, often financed by the Ford Foundation, to study the political climate and/or to lecture in Northern Africa, the Middle East, India, Latin America, France, the Soviet Union under Brezhnev (interesting analysis), Poland on the eve of Solidarity, and post-Maoist China (after the Cultural Revolution but before Tienanmen Square). Everywhere Stern had received introductions to prominent people (especially to dissidents).
Stern was much in demand as a speaker on the international stage. The high point of this was the invitation in 1987 to address the Bundestag on the anniversary of the East Berlin uprising of June 17 1953. I found the pages dealing with this speech and its reception (pp.443 to 450) among the most gripping in the book.
Stern is critical, not of German reunification, but of the way Kohl handled the issue and of the insensitive way in which West Germans have treated the East Germans.
Stern's judgments on historical and political issues strike me as being wise and sane. His book, however, is sadly marred for me by a narcissistic flavour (despite frequent protestations of feeling humble and surprised at the honours bestowed on him), and not least by his frequent quotations of laudatory reviews and congratulatory remarks in letters he received from famous people.
Customer Reviews:
History and Our Times.......2007-07-12
The Houses of History is a very complete book for those who are enthralled by history. Preferably, for those who like to understand first the big picture concerning our changing times. This unique book takes you throughout the stages of history during the twentieth century and better yet, through the different trends that those who record history have faced from the modern to the post modern times.It also includes interesting excerpts for each particular history theory. This product must be read by anyone who wants to understand nowadays' social, cultural and political movements.
useful.......2007-01-23
I read this book for a methods course as well as some of the other reviewers. The format of the book is useful since it provides a synopsis of the selected perspectives as well as a reading that provides an example of the method/interpretation in action. While it is not always entertaining, it is not designed to be; it is a critical reader designed to promote critical discussion. I completed an annotated bibliography of the work (since Troup references many scholars and their works) and found this very useful so that I could read the better known examples that Troup discusses in each section. This book is a good spring board to further studies in the historian's journey to becoming thinking historian who is sensitive to the relationship between worldview, interpretation and methods in the historian's research.
Dull Dull Dull This Book needs to be reworked........2005-12-12
I am a university student majoring in history. I was forced to endure the reading of this book for a course in historical methods. I found the book to be very dull in its presentation and arguments about the historical house. This is not just my opinion but that of my fellow students as well. In a class of thirty people only two or three found the book excellent to use the rest of us found it a disaster. There are numerous other sources out there that present this material in a more colorful and interesting fashion. I am no fan of this book. The book does present the very broad subdivisions of historical research. I disagree with anyone who is in the study of history that allows one book, one professor, or one course to mold their like or dislike for this discipline. I suffered through this book because it was mandated for the course. I did learn something about the topic. So in that way the book did have useful information in it. I just would like to suggest to those who want to learn about the historical houses of history that there is an abundant amount of material available both on the web and published that is much better in presentation then this book. For the dullness and lackluster presentation of the material I gave this book only 3 stars.
Great intro text - which Jay obviously couldn't handle.......2005-07-11
Great book. Before I read it, I had been confused by the various historiographical 'houses.' Now I know what's what. Anyone who's doing a historiography course at university should read this book because it (a) explains most things well and (b) makes it clear that there is a lot of conscious consideration behind how historians approach the past, which I think anyone who plans to study the past for a living needs to know. Jay's negative review shows he isn't willing to engage in a sophisticated analysis of the historian's influence on history.
Don't listen to Jay!.......2002-12-05
This is a response to the first review written by Jay, who claims that this book made him hate history, and further, change majors because of it. If this is the case, then that it great. The study of history doesn't need people like Jay! The value of this text is that it presents a brief synopsis of the main schools of historical thought, and an according sample with each. Jay is obviously of the dominant school (empiricist) that thinks history chould be treated like a science, without concern for philosophical questions. Despite what you may think about postmodernism, it has unearthed the deception of the empiricist school. By professing their method as THE path to THE truth, empiricists cut off unthought ideas by setting up a power discourse. They rule the universities, and anyone who wants to become a 'professional' historian must take his/her PHD pill from them. HOUSES OF HISTORY is a great text for the beginner in that it provides a brief summary of the schools of history, which is invaluable in undertaking a historiography course. Historiography is NOT boring and useless, and any historian who thinks it is is simply trying to prevent new ideas from emerging, ideas that might (oh no!) compromise his/her position. Don't listen to Jay.
Book Description
A superb reference for writers, researchers, students and teachers, this dictionary-style book illuminates everyday life in the 1800s, decade by decade. Readers will find hundreds of otherwise obscure facts about:
* Popular slang--from the range to the underworld
* How to furnish a farmhouse or outfit a barn
* How much it cost for a shot of whiskey or to mail a letter
* Styles of the fashionable--and not so fashionable
* Courtship and marriage rituals
* Popular food and drink--including brand names
* And much, much more!
Customer Reviews:
One book you will need as a writer........2007-08-23
This book has all the stuff you will need to make your novel seem real. I promise you will enjoy this book even if you are not a writer. I found the answers to all the questions I had been asking. I thank Marc McCutcheon for all his hard work. It has helped me.
Great information at your finger tips.......2007-01-29
This is a great reference guide. I am currently writing a romance novel set in the mid 1800's. The chapters are easy to find what you're looking for and the examples show how the word or phrase was used. If your looking for a great reference guide that is straight to the point I would highly recommend "Everyday Life in the 1880's"
Mediocre, missing essential information, poorly constructed.......2006-06-12
This book lacks any information about education. Such an essential subject - affecting children and adults alike - should certainly be included.
Nor does it include information about art (visual/performing) or literature pertinent to the people at the time.
It also has no index, so that searching for anything is ridiculously slow.
Visuals are lacking - textual descriptions of hair or various equipment are poor substitutes for an image.
Essentially it is a poorly organized dictionary, and stating that it is "a guide for writers, students and historians" is an overstatement to say the least!
Simply a dictionary .......2006-03-09
When I read the description of the book I thought that this book would actually provide information about everyday life in the 1800's; instead, it is merely a dictionary. There are no passages that describe fashion, etiquette, industry, clothing, or anything else useful to a historian. Instead, the book merely provides one sentence descriptions of objects you probabaly can already identify. This book may be useful if you come across the name of an item in a primary text and you are not sure what it is. However, it provides very little useful general information
Holy disorganization, Batman...........2005-12-28
It's been a few months since I read this, but I thought I might give a review.
I found this book horrid. It was not organized in a way that would be simple and easy for a reader. As a writer of historical fiction I was interested in finding out about daily life during the Civil War. But I would find references from all years thrown together so I had to fish out the important details.It was not broken down by years or decades which I think would have been much easier. I gave up on this book because I couldn't find the information I needed.
If you are a writer and are thinking about this book I suggest getting it from the library, and if you believe it will be of use to you buy it then.
Book Description
What is history and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft, as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today. Gaddis points out that while the historical method is more sophisticated than most historians realize, it doesn't require unintelligible prose to explain. Like cartographers mapping landscapes, historians represent what they can never replicate. In doing so, they combine the techniques of artists, geologists, paleontologists, and evolutionary biologists. Their approaches parallel, in intriguing ways, the new sciences of chaos, complexity, and criticality. They don't much resemble what happens in the social sciences, where the pursuit of independent variables functioning with static systems seems increasingly divorced from the world as we know it. So who's really being scientific and who isn't? This question too is one Gaddis explores, in ways that are certain to spark interdisciplinary controversy. Written in the tradition of Marc Bloch and E.H. Carr, The Landscape of History is at once an engaging introduction to the historical method for beginners, a powerful reaffirmation of it for practitioners, a startling challenge to social scientists, and an effective skewering of post-modernist claims that we can't know anything at all about the past. It will be essential reading for anyone who reads, writes, teaches, or cares about history.
Customer Reviews:
The Theory of why we write hsitory .......2007-09-18
Gaddis takes an interesting look at how historians have developed the methodologies that make up history. This is an extended survey that considers aspects of biography and the natural sciences. While at times his comparisons can be a stretch there is useful information to be gleamed from this book. First let me start off by saying that this is only for those who really want to look at the philosophical side of why historians write about history. This is not necessarily a book on the how but it explores the perspectives that historians find themselves writing on throughout the course of their works. The comparisons to natural science are either a cry for a more streamlined system of causality or a plea for historians to look at the causal relationships of events. One of the more interesting points Gaddis makes is the idea that historians work backwards to write forwards. We take events that happen in the past and work backwards to find out how they occurred but we present them for our reader in a chronological cause and effect scenario. Overall this is interesting theory but the book wanders too much and really the things he discussed could easily have been said in 75 pages and not 150.
Mapping the Past.......2007-07-26
Gaddis is a giant in the field of history, most notably for his exhaustive studies on the Cold War. What he attempts to do here is give a detailed, scientific description of how the historian does what he does. Contary to some of the other reviewers, I did not find this an easy read. More on that in a minute, first I'll say what I did glean from the book. Gaddis starts off comparing the historian to a geographer. Much like a map-maker is incapable of mapping a large area of terrain while standing on that terrain, a historian cannot accurately describe an event if they are involved in it. You must be outside it, or above it to get all the perspectives and deliver an objective view of the overall situation. This section was good.
Gaddis also tries to argue that history is more of a scientific process than many people realize. In fact, he claims that the historical method has more in common with that of a geologist, physicist, or paleontologist than a social scientist. To argue this point, he uses an array of scientific jargon, analogies, and metaphors. He writes as if he is trying to convince a scientist of the scientific validity of the historian's craft. In fact I read that this book is essentially an expansion of some speeches he gave to science students, attempting to do just that. This is why I had some difficulty with the book. I have virtually no science background and therefore found much of the scientific jargon to be over my head. For Pete's sake, one of the reasons that I'm a history major is because I'm no good at science! Anyway, I do not dispute Gaddis' knowledge or talent in his chosen field, that is not an issue. But I would just offer the warning that if you are not reasonably well-versed in basic scientific concepts, this book will be a challenge. Needless to say, those with a basic understanding of science will no doubt get much more out of this book than I did.
More Defense than Method.......2007-04-04
I've looked at over a dozen books to try and find a good, solid guide for my students to they can have a foot up on thinking historically. Gaddis book is more philosophy and comparisons with social and natural science than it is a book describing historical theory and method. Perhaps I run in my accepting circles but I've never had to defend my historical work or my department against attacks from social or natural scientists; we realize that every discipline has it's own way of gathering, analyzing and using information. By and large this book seemed like a apologia than a guide for historians. While it was a interesting read for me, I firmly believe it would confuse most undergraduates making the audience for this book much more narrow than I had hoped.
must read for the historically minded.......2006-07-06
John Lewis Gaddis has done all who read or make history a great service with his reflections on history: what it is and is not, its limitations, its purposes, its biases. As someone who gets paid for producing historical studies, I found this book particularly helpful with its insights. There are very few jarring notes--the worst being that Gaddis says he agrees with postmodernists that "all our bases for evaluating behavior [i.e. making moral judgments] are themselves artifacts of behavior." Ignore this bit of confusion and enjoy the rest, which is eminently lucid. I particularly liked his comparing what the historian does to what a cartographer does in making a map: first, choosing what landscape to depict, what the emphases will be, and what to leave out. I also liked his comparison of history as a discipline with sciences like paleontology, geology, and astronomy--where experiments cannot be conducted except in the mind. Overall, a significant book; highly recommended.
a unique glimpse into the mind of a master historian.......2006-05-24
A brief, but entirely enjoyable book on the craft of history. John Lewis Gaddis's book is really a collection of speeches he gave during a visiting professorship at Oxford. The speeches center on the art and science of historical research. He challenges the view held by many social scientists that downplay historians as storytellers whose craft lack the rigor of the scientific method. Gaddis claims that the historical method is more complex that most realize and that historians have more in common with evolutionary biologists and astronomers than economists and political scientists. Despite the academic nature of the subject, the chapters are very readable, since they were written as speeches. The only downside was his attempts at pop-culture humor in an attempt to seem hip to the Oxford audience. A man of his standing in the field of Soviet history has nothing to prove to a bunch of British 19-year olds.
Nevertheless, the book offers a unique glimpse into the mind of a master historian. Good history reads easily, with beautiful narrative, deep research, and thought-provoking analysis. This Gaddis book describes how complex the process can be. It made me appreciate first rate history even more.
Book Description
This collection of essays by twenty-one distinguished American historians reflects on a peculiarly American way of imagining the past. At a time when history-writing has changed dramatically, the authors discuss the birth and evolution of historiography in this country, from its origins in the late nineteenth century through its present, more cosmopolitan character.
In the book's first part, concerning recent historiography, are chapters on exceptionalism, gender, economic history, social theory, race, and immigration and multiculturalism. Authors are Daniel Rodgers, Linda Kerber, Naomi Lamoreaux, Dorothy Ross, Thomas Holt, and Philip Gleason. The three American centuries are discussed in the second part, with chapters by Gordon Wood, George Fredrickson, and James Patterson. The third part is a chronological survey of non-American histories, including that of Western civilization, ancient history, the middle ages, early modern and modern Europe, Russia, and Asia. Contributors are Eugen Weber, Richard Saller, Gabrielle Spiegel, Anthony Molho, Philip Benedict, Richard Kagan, Keith Baker, Joseph Zizak, Volker Berghahn, Charles Maier, Martin Malia, and Carol Gluck.
Together, these scholars reveal the unique perspective American historians have brought to the past of their own nation as well as that of the world. Formerly writing from a conviction that America had a singular destiny, American historians have gradually come to share viewpoints of historians in other countries about which they write. The result is the virtual disappearance of what was a distinctive American voice. That voice is the subject of this book.
Customer Reviews:
The Exception to Real History, or Historiography Gone Awry.......2000-03-30
Responding to what they perceive to be an exceptional"historiographic moment" (p. 17), editors Anthony Molho andGordon S. Wood pool a "highly selective" and "partial" (p. viii) collection of essays on American history-writing in their book Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past. The tangent essays focus on topics of social history, the three centuries of American history, important epochs for western civilization, and a few chapters on other nations, mostly European. However, the threefold axis for spinning such disjointed historiographies into the same volume might possible be defined as follows: (1) a revisionist debunking of Americanism as a teleological historic apex, namely "exceptionalism"; (2) a concerted shift to rewriting history from the viewpoint of the "marginal" and "forgotten" people (p. 11), or the new social history; and (3) an emerging "transoceanic cosmopolitanism" (p. viii), i.e., a growing international perspective among American historians. These three themes as developed by the different contributors to the book and a few brief comments on each will delineate the parameters of this paper. Just say nay to exceptionalism. Rodgers' chapter is the keynote for this major theme of the book. "Is America different?" he begins (p. 21). But then he wrestles with the semantic slide from "difference" to "uniqueness" to "provincialism" to "newness" to "providentialism" to finally "exceptionalism". For him, "exceptionalism differs from difference. Difference requires contrast; exceptionalism requires a rule" (p. 22). This Russian epithet, a "Stalinist coinage of the 1920s" (p. 23) albeit anachronistic according to Rodgers' historical construct (cf. irrelevant colonial "language of eschatology and millennialism"), somehow stuck as witness of American historians' ready adaptation of Marx's "general laws of historical motion" (pp. 25, 27, 28) and the Augustinian "teleological arrow" (p. 31), the content of such "laws" and "arrow" Rodgers does not specify but only assumes, i.e., "general laws" (p. 29; cf. "imagined rules", p. 30). Pejoratives of this exceptionalism abound-"storybook truth" (p. 29), "thin line between history and faith" (p. 26), "exhortation" replacing "analysis" (p. 24)-and, according to the text's contributors, this type of thinking has left its marks on just about every American historiography. Countries like Spain, Japan, and Russia and their "systems" are seen as "antithesis", "Other", "rival", and "challenge" (pp. 329, 340, 416, 417, 450; cf. the absence of America's medieval past, its "alterity" or "otherness", pp. 239, 253) while America is portrayed as the consummation of important westernizing forces, i.e., the Romans as "antecedents of American liberalism" (p. 224), the "nexus between the Renaissance and modernity" in the American Bildung (pp. 264, 267), and the Reformation as the "historical self-definition of so many Protestant churches" (p. 299). Compare the American role in the development of "Western Civilization" (pp. 207ff.), but contrast the difficulty of the revisionists in integrating the French revolution into any exceptionalist framework due to what Baker and Zizek call the constraints of "observational perspective" and "ethnographic distance" (pp. 350ff.). Correspondingly, historians of the colonial period, the nineteenth, and the twentieth centuries contest issues of relevance (p. 157), participation (p. 168), and fragmentation (p. 185), respectively, while others have given a voice to those who have been excluded by exceptionalism, "especially blacks, Indians, and women" contra "white males" (p. 164), under the themes of race (see p. 108), gender (see p. 47), economics, immigration (see pp. 120, 131), etc. Clearly, according to the naysayers, the tentacles of exceptionalism are to be found everywhere. The proletariat gets a face. The postmodern undoing of residual exceptionalism falls to the champions of what is dubbed the "new social and cultural history" (pp. 12, 30; cf. the effects on cliometrics, pp. 63-69, and particularly the debate about Time on the Cross, pp. 72-75) or "history from the bottom up" (p. 11, like the Annales school; cf. p. 443), which is supposedly "authentic history" (p. 30). It is really a story about the masses, in contrast to the story of the elite, which is nothing really new (contra Ross, pp. 91ff.; cf. the work of the Russians Kliuchevskii, Kareev, Luchitskii, Rostovtseff, p. 421, the work of Reformation scholars, pp. 299ff., and the consistent trend of people's history in Medieval studies, p. 249), only that more people are writing about it, and American historians think that they have discovered it (see Wood's exaggerations, p. 156), an excellent example of provincial mentality (a la self-contradiction)! According to the new social engineers, it is a story about reversing those "hidden structures of power" (p. 53) in such realms as race, gender, class, and money, an attempt to break down the old scaffolds in order to radically reconstruct modern societal relationships (i.e., Kerber's gender analysis; cf. the excellent assessment by Ross, p. 98). The historical "resurrection" of the proletariat, better a Russian than American accomplishment, spells the deathknoll of American exceptionalism as the teleologically caricatured and eurocentrically warped enterprise is rendered invalid by the mass of voices in protest to the contrary. There really is a world, Horace. The inferred omnipresence (p. 13) of a concatenation of international historiographic voices toward globalization completes the tightening of the hangman's noose on the "old-fashioned unified sense of American identity" (p. 14). Most noteworthy are American collaborations with the French (pp. 361ff.), with Russians, i.e., important gap-filling (p. 431), with the Japanese, i.e., critique of "nationalizing" (p. 445), and especially concerning nagging questions of cosmopolitan moment, predominately from the twentieth century (see pp. 397ff.). However, this worldwide revisionist overthrow of exceptionalism does not at all explain the already existing and quite lengthy cooperation of international scholars in precisely the historical fields upon which exceptionalist thought was founded (see p. 207), namely the classics which are "transnational in character" (p. 222), Renaissance studies, transformed as early as the 1930s by Jewish immigrants from Germany (p. 270), and the Reformation which has always been primary domain for European scholars (pp. 295ff.). Furthermore, the question of identity bashing does not appear to be fully established. Resisters abound, notably in the areas of western civilization ("they flee Eurocentrism only to meet Europe in Samarra," p. 218) and about Spain (which "remains something of an Other," p. 340). The evidence toward global solidarity and a worldwide multiculturalism is not so ubiquitous after all. All in all, Imagined Histories is a good attempt to give momentum to the postmodern debunking of Americanism on the basis of social reconstructionism and multiculturalism, but in the final analysis, these subtle shifts might be accurately described as vacillations not in substance but only in kind, and the overall thrust is best seen as merely straining out the gnat.
Customer Reviews:
A "must-have" guide for history majors and a useful quick-check resource for professional historians, highly recommended........2007-07-08
Written by Robert C. Williams (Vail Professor of History and Dean of Faculty Emeritus, Davidson College) The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History is a reader-friendly guide for aspiring historians of all skill and experience levels. Now in an updated second edition with five new chapters, The Historian's Toolbox covers everything from how to choose a good history topic and write a solid paper, to evaluating primary, secondary, and tertiary historical sources, to format guidelines for credits and acknowledgments, to historical narrative as compared to interpretation or speculation, to even the potentials and abuses of the user-modified website Wikipedia. A "must-have" guide for history majors and a useful quick-check resource for professional historians, highly recommended.
Grand theory and nuts-and-bolts.......2003-07-09
Williams gives instructors and students of history two books in one. Part one is a quick look at some of the big ideas and controversies of the profession. These short chapters on such topics as metahistory and anti-history should provide great fodder for class discussions. Part two on "the tools of history" offers good guidance on researching, writing, and thinking about history. Again, short, provocative chapters should stimulate students to think and talk about the joys and difficulties of doing quality history. I'll assign the book to my next class on historical research and writing. With this book as a guide, students will not write just another term paper; they'll know how to craft a livelier, deeper, and more revealing interpretation of the past.
Customer Reviews:
put out the safety cones: historians at work.......2006-06-03
This is precisely the type of history book advocated by James Loewen, the author of "Lies My Teacher Told Me."
Take five scholars, all discussing the same event, and end up with five quite different interpretations of that event. The editors did a great job of introducing each of the scholar's views, pointing out bones of contention, backgrounding the source material. This is how history is supposed to be taught!
I think one reviewer may have mischaracterized this book as racist. To say that only the views of the Spanish were presented, when in fact the only source material available is from the Spanish colonials, is to confuse the viewpoint of the historian with the viewpoint of the 17th century government of Spain.
I'm thinking about buying the whole series of Historians at Work if they are all this interesting.
Interesting but a Little Racist.......2006-01-31
This book had a lot of great information about how the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 affected the Spanish. It tells how they felt, what they did, what they thought, where they went. It even tells about what they thought the American Indians were thinking and feeling at the time. There are even passages citing American Indian quotations that were written by totally biased Spaniards from the time of the revolt! So, if you're interested in hearing just one side of a very important event, this is the perfect book. I think this really would be a good book if it were coupled with another book that attempted to show the other side.
History Through Different Windows.......2000-04-26
Weber has put together a selection of informative essays by different authors, all dealing with the famed Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Given that the (for a time successful) uprising took place, the question for students of history is the standard one: Why?
As the essays in this book point out, there is no one answer to that question. There are, instead, many answers, and additional questions.
In history, it's not so much a case of arriving at the "truth." Rather, it's the journey of discovery that really counts. The essays Weber has collected run the gamut, from turgid academic writing and sniping to refreshingly clearly-stated prose. His introduction is masterly, the bibliographic references invaluable, and the overall effect one of having learned just how complex and diverse the causes of an effect can be.
Highly recommended for readers interested in this area, especially for classroom use at the college and university level.
Amazon.com
Counterfactuals--what-if scenarios--fueled countless bull sessions in smoke-filled dorm rooms in the 1960s. What if Sitting Bull had had a machine gun at Little Big Horn? What if Attila the Hun had had a time machine? What if Columbus had landed in India after all? Some of those dorm-room speculators grew up to be historians, and their generation (along with a few younger and older scholars) makes a strong showing in this anthology of essays, in which the what-ifs are substantially more plausible. What if Hitler had not attacked Russia when he did? He might have moved into the Middle East and secured the oil supplies the Third Reich so badly needed, helping it retain its power in Europe. What if D-Day had been a failure? The Soviet Union might have controlled all of Europe. What if Sennacherib had pressed the siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C.? Then the nascent, monotheistic Jewish religion might never have taken hold among the people of Judah--and the daughter religions of Christianity and Islam would never have been born.
So suggest some of the many first-rate contributors to this collection, which grew from a special issue of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. One of them is classicist Josiah Ober, who suggests that if Alexander the Great had died at the age of 21 instead of 32, Greece would have been swallowed up by Persia and Rome, and the modern Western world would have a much different sensibility--and probably little idea of democratic government. Still other contributors are Stephen E. Ambrose, Caleb Carr, John Keegan, David McCullough, and James McPherson, who examine a range of scenarios populated by dozens of historical figures, including Sir Walter Raleigh, Chiang Kai-shek, Robert E. Lee, Benito Mussolini, and Themistocles. The result is a fascinating exercise in historical speculation, one that emphasizes the importance of accident and of roads not taken in the evolution of human societies across time. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
Historians and philosophers alike have pondered the crucial turning points of history-events that forever altered the course of civilization, and set the stage for the world in which we live today. In these essays, some of the most respected minds of our time ask the question "What If..."
George Washington had never made his miraculous escape from the British on Long Island in the dawn of August 29, 1776?
A Confederate aide hadn't accidentally lost General Robert E. Lee's plans for invading the North?
Alexander the Great had been slain in battle, instead of saved at the last instant by a loyal bodyguard?
The Allied invasion on D-Day had failed?
The Mongols had succeeded in conquering Europe?
Both fascinating and frightening, What If? offers in-depth reflections on the monumental events of the past, and amazing speculations as to what our world might be like had things gone differently in that one singular moment in time.
"Fascinating and provocative."- New York Times Book Review
"The book of the year for any history lover."-Kirkus Reviews
"Counter-factual supposes, would-haves, might-haves, could-haves, possiblys, perhapses, probablys and maybes, in all their dizzying permutations."-Time
"Consistently well-drawn, these scenarios open intellectual as well as imaginative doors."-Publishers Weekly
"Great Fun."-Entertainment Weekly
"A captivating display of historical imagination, What If? takes us through 2,500 years of close squeaks and narrow misses."-C. Vann Woodward, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University
What If? includes contributions by:
Stephen E. Ambrose
Caleb Carr
James Chace
Theodore F. Cook, Jr.
Robert Cowley
Thomas Fleming
David Fromkin
Ira D. Gruber
Victor Davis Hanson
Ross Hassig
Cecilia Holland
Alistair Horne
John Keegan
Lewis H. Lapham
David Clay Large
David Mccullough
William H. McNeill
James M. Mcpherson
Ted Morgan
Williamson Murray
Josiah Ober
Robert L. O'Connell
Geoffrey Parker
Peter Pierson
Barbara N. Porter
Theodore K. Rabb
Elihu Rose
Stephen W. Sears
Dennis E. Showalter
Barry S. Strauss
Arthur Waldron
Tom Wicker
Customer Reviews:
Fascinating Reading.......2007-06-24
There have been many reviewers that delved into the battles discussed in the book in depth. I pose a broader question - doesn't it make it intellectually interesting to ponder what might have been, but for some slight change that caused history to be what it is today? You can think of your own situations perhaps - what if you had done x instead of Y at some point in your life. Fascinating reading and stimulating to the mind!
Thoroughly Entertaining, if Flawed, Speculation.......2006-10-12
What if Charles Martel lost and the Moors over-ran France? What if Robert E. Lee had won at Chancellorsville? These are a few of the outcomes considered by some of the best historians of a generation. I found these projections of unfulfilled history fascinating. It is only a few years later that I realized that the perspectives of these historians are somewhat tainted by their middle-class, Anglo-American roots. What, may I ask, did the Moors feel after their defeat in the battle of Tours? Were the peasants better off under the Franks or under the Moors? As for Chancellorsville, did a dirt-farmer from South Carolina, fooled into thinking he was fighting for states-rights, really benefit if the South won the war? These questions find no answers in this anthology. The historians present here a fascinating story in the vein that larger-than-life individuals make history and they do so by making a particular choice at a particular time. This perspective belies that fact that while Eisenhower sat in a conference room in England, privates, sergeants, and lieutenants made history on the beaches of Normandy.
With this warning aside, this is a facinating read. Buy the book.
If this review helps, please respond favorably.
What if my Dad hadn't met my Mom?.......2006-07-14
In this interesting book, many of the best military historians of the English language take up some of the crucial moments in history and analyze the way in which apparently irrelevant changes in the development of events could have brought up radically different outcomes in the Fate of humankind. It gives you the creeps to think about how weather, the personality of protagonists, or hair-splitting decision-making could have changed history forever. If Senacherib's army hadn't suffered a plague in 701 B.C., right before taking Jerusalem, there would haveb been no Judaism and no Christianism. If Greece had lost the battle of Salamis, no Greek culture would have developed. If Hernan Cortez had been killed by the Aztecs, there would have been no Mexico (and I would had never been born). If only Napoleon had known his limits after Tilsit... If Hitler had given up on conquering the Soviet Union...
As distinguished historians as William McNeill, David McCullough, Stephen Ambrose, John Keegan and many others participate. I only took one star away because the authors tend to spend more time telling what really happened than in imagining the possible alternative outcomes, but it is very interesting.
Interesting, makes you think, but read it with a grain of salt.......2006-06-20
A friend gave me this book to borrow. The best part about this book is that it gives some very detailed historical facts that I never knew, but I suppose that's how they ask the "what if" questions in the first place.
Like others have pointed out, some essays are better than others. Some are more detailed and provide more counterfactual history than others - other than just asking questions and making your mind explode because they don't actually answer anything. No, in a few cases, the author actually states what he/she thinks would have resulted, and hence what the world would be like today if per se, an event had occured differently.
I was slightly disappointed by the fact that there was nothing beyond World War II. A few of the most significant "what if" questions are attributed to the last half century, and it was unfortunate that this collection failed to include any. I assume most historians believe it to be too early to deduce counterfactual events, but isn't that what history is all about? That is, learning from the past events to predict the present and future.
I liked this book because it does contain a rather comprehensive amount of historical information. Unless you are a history guru, you might not need to buy this book. But definetly check it out and read what interests you. I recommend this book for anyone slightly interested in history and social sciences, because this book makes you think, and for that I am grateful to have read it.
A mixture of good and fair essays, but well worth reading.......2006-02-24
"What If" offers a series of essays pondering different counterfactuals in military history. Written by acclaimed historians, these essays range in time from the siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC the Cold War struggles over Berlin. Essays also cover Greek and Roman battles, Alexander the Great, the Mongol Invasion of Europe, the Spanish Armada, the American Revolution and Civil War, WWI, and four essays on WWII. As these essays range in time period and subject matter, they also vary in quality.
Counterfactual histories can be useful ways to learn history, but they have limitations. Most of the better essays, such as John Keegan's "How Hitler Could Have Won the War" and Alistair Horne's "Ruler of the World: Napoleon's Lost Opportunities" are limited in scope and describe how, had certain leaders taken a different approach, they could have been more effective and possibly changed history. Others, such as Thomas Fleming's "Unlikely Victory: Thirteen Ways the Americans Could Have Lost the Revolution" and Robert Cowley's "The What Ifs of 1914," describe the many tiny turning points that could have radically changed history. All of these essays do a very good job and remain true to the limited utility of counterfactual history: what ifs are possible different courses of history and should be described as such.
Unfortunately, not all of the essays are so limited and go on to speculate concrete changes, especially the essays about the ancient world. For example, Lewis Lapham, in "Furor Teutonicus: The Teutonic Forest, A.D. 9," speculates that, had the Romans defeated the Germanic army in that battle, the Roman Empire would have lasted until modern times, and the U.S.A. would instead have become the United (Roman) Provinces of America.
The book is well worth reading. Overall, the authors do a good job illustrating why these battles or events are so important, and one of its strengths is the breadth of "key battles" in history that are covered. And while some of the essays are weaker than others, none of the essays are very long, and soon the reader will be on to another watershed moment in history.
Amazon.com
Many armchair historians have spent hours daydreaming of what might have been if some turning point in history had gone another way. The appeal of the What If? books is that editor Robert Cowley gets professional historians to concentrate on these imaginative questions. The first volume focused entirely on military matters; What If? 2 leans heavily but not exclusively in that direction. Victor Davis Hanson wonders about the consequences for Western philosophy if Socrates had died in battle, Thomas Fleming ponders a Napoleonic invasion of North America, and Caleb Carr argues the Second World War lasted longer than it should have because George Patton's superiors restrained their energetic general. More than two dozen contributors offer bold speculation: If the Chinese had committed themselves to ocean exploration, asks Theodore F. Cook Jr., might they have discovered the New World and even prevented "the worst horrors of the Atlantic Slave Trade [by halting] Portuguese expansion along the African coast at this early date?" Other times they are pleasantly modest: In one of the book's best sections, John Lukacs describes the fantasy of Teddy Roosevelt defeating Woodrow Wilson in the 1912 election--and decides the long- term effects would not have been great. Like its predecessor, What If? 2 is delicious mind candy for readers willing to believe there's nothing inevitable about what has come before us. --John Miller
Book Description
What if Lincoln didn't abolish slavery? What if an assassin succeeded in killing FDR in 1933? This volume presents 25 intriguing "what if..." scenarios by some of today's greatest historical minds-including James Bradley, Caleb Carr, James Chace, Theodore F. Cook, Jr., Carlos M.N. Eire, George Feifer, Thomas Fleming, Richard B. Frank, Victor Davis Hanson, Cecelia Holland, Alistair Horne, David Kahn, Robert Katz, John Lukacs, William H. McNeill, Lance Morrow, Williamson Murray, Josiah Ober, Robert L. O'Connell, Geoffrey Parker, Theodore K. Rabb, Andrew Roberts, Roger Spiller, Geoffrey C. Ward, and Tom Wicker.
Download Description
What if Lincoln didn't abolish slavery? What if an assassin succeeded in killing FDR in 1933? This volume presents 25 intriguing "what if..." scenarios by some of today's greatest historical minds-including James Bradley, Caleb Carr, James Chace, Theodore F. Cook, Jr., Carlos M.N. Eire, George Feifer, Thomas Fleming, Richard B. Frank, Victor Davis Hanson, Cecelia Holland, Alistair Horne, David Kahn, Robert Katz, John Lukacs, William H. McNeill, Lance Morrow, Williamson Murray, Josiah Ober, Robert L. O'Connell, Geoffrey Parker, Theodore K. Rabb, Andrew Roberts, Roger Spiller, Geoffrey C. Ward, and Tom Wicker.
Customer Reviews:
FDR's Homosexual Witch Hunt and the "Luck" of Polio.......2007-10-09
Books like this typically leave me cold. History is most often driven by factors so large that changing one event does little to change the ultimate outcome. As one German historian told me, once the United States entered WWII, there was no plausible scenario in which Nazi Germany could win. With its enormous material resources, a large industrial economy, an ocean between us and the fighting, and twice Germany's population, we could not lose.
But with individuals, "what if" scenarios can seriously alter history, because everything that person does may not happen. If Hitler had been killed in the trenches of WWI, history from 1930 on would have been so unimaginably different, that it is difficult to even suggest what might have been. FDR's role in history may not be as great as that of Hitler. Given what happened between 1939 and 1942, it's difficult to imagine any President not taking us to war. But there is no denying that, absent FDR, both American and world history would be very different.
That's why I found Geoffrey Ward's contribution to this book, "The Luck of Franklin Delano Roosevelt" interesting. But for some extraordinary strokes of luck, FDR might never had become President. One of those strokes of luck is counter-intuitive. It came when polio struck him down in 1921, leaving him severely disabled.
After WWI, FDR was one of the bright young men whose future seemed assured. He had everything needed to go far--a famous family name, charm, wealth, and enormous vitality. It was the last that almost destroyed his political career. In spring of 1919, the Secretary of the Navy sailed to Europe, leaving his assistant, FDR, in charge with a warning not to sign anything important. Unfortunately in his zeal, FDR did sign something that really mattered. He approved an order to rid the naval base at Newport, RI of homosexuals by using young sailors who were instructed, "to become sexually involved with homosexuals 'to the limit,' in order to obtain evidence against them."
In the ensuring uproar, both the Navy and the Senate investigated the extent to which FDR was involved. Politically, he couldn't win. If he denied that he'd read the order before signing it, he would be claiming incompetence. If he claimed to know what he was doing, he was guilty of abuses that no one would defend. FDR took the former as the lesser of two evils, but to this day we do not know what his role actually was. I quote Ward:
"Here, Roosevelt's illness turned out to be an unlikely boon. The Senate subcommittee's charges had just surfaced on the front page of the New York Times--which had headlined its story "Lay Navy Scandal to F. D. Roosevelt" and then made things even worse than they were by declaring its details "Unprintable"--when he sailed for Campobello and his rendezvous with infantile paralysis in the summer of 1921. After Roosevelt was stricken, even his most implacable opponents saw nothing to be gained in doing further damage to a now-helpless man whose political race had so obviously been run. The story was allowed to die away."
The controversy illustrates something that should be kept in mind. Our present cultural divide about sex is relatively recent. If anything FDR acted with more prosecutorial zeal than someone more conservative, say Barry Goldwater, might have acted. When it comes to sexuality, particularly homosexuality, liberals and conservatives used to agreed. If you have doubts, read WWII-era journalists, such as William Shirer, who eagerly trumpeted the homosexuality of Nazi Brownshirt leaders and yet more proof that Nazi was morbidly unhealthy. If anything liberals, who took Freud more seriously, tended to be more critical than conservatives.
Consider another example. In the 1950s, liberals almost went after the former Communist spy turned informant Whittaker Chambers, for being a homosexual. They weren't deterred by any moral scruples about "homophobia." They fretted that the charges, which were true, might backfire. Americans might conclude that Chambers was having homosexual relations with Alger Hiss, the person he was accusing (rightly) of being a Soviet spy.
The same is true in other areas. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, covertly wanted abortion legalized, but to keep liberal support for her birth control agenda, she had to attack abortion and claim that birth control would prevent it. And in the late 1960s, in their zeal to get federally funded family planning (particularly for blacks), liberal politicians claimed that the federal programs would fight "the evil of abortion." From an evil to a right in perhaps five years. It's difficult to discern just what such people believe.
--Michael W. Perry, editor of The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective: The Birth Control Classic
Biased book.......2007-04-11
There are many flaws in this book. First, if you did not know who the authors were, you would guess that they are Americans by the contents of this book. There is prejudice against the Persians, Mongols, etc. For example, the dropping of the atomic bomb killed hundreds of thousands of people and the authors claim that this was good for the Japanese people because it has avoided a Soviet take-over of Japan. Quite arguable, read Howard Zinn's counter-arguments about this episode of History.
Second, it spends most of the time relating what actually happened than describing what would have happened if history was changed. Even then, there is a lot of speculation without much proof.
Third, do not simplify history. For example, if the Romans had invaded Germany, there would still exist a Luther and an English language. Although the English language has a germanic origin, 2/3 of its words come from Latin and Romance languages (French-Norman influence). Hence, anybody can speculate about what would have happened, but arguments should be provided to support these speculations
Try driving forward by looking in the rear view mirror ..........2006-12-11
Counterfactual history is just fun. That's it. This collection of essays is fun. The essays are so good that it's easily imagined that a novice historical reader will surely mix it up with reality at some point. So many, are so history ignorant, that the material discussed could well become believable mind fertilizer for some.
The selected essay writers have chosen fascinating historical tipping points to extrapolate `what if'. The who's who of essay writers toying with the `what if' are brave indeed and have done a very cool job of playing counterfactual. The author's have stepped out of responsibility to play the game. Readers need to respond responsibly.
This is a good read. My 3-stars is purely based on the concept. There's enough confusion regarding the facts. Inputing counterfactuals into reality seems nearly taboo ... it is fun though.
The lesson in researched counterfactualism is that the smallest and seemingly most trivial event can be seen to work together in time to produce revolutionary results ... or not.
Interesting history and hope for the future.......2005-11-16
This book is interesting history but is rather uneven. In some of the scenarios where I was not familiar with the actual history I had trouble following which of the events being discussed were the real events and which were the 'what if'. The ones I liked best were on Socrates, the Australian defense of New Guinea, Pontius Pilate, and Pius XII denouncing the Holocaust. The scenario on 'what if the potato hadn't been discovered' was interesting, but didn't seem to make any attempt to show that non-discovery of the potato was a real possibility.
Overall, though, the book is good. Its main point, that history is surprisingly contingent, is very well taken. I am an environmentalist and an ecological economist. I am greatly discouraged by the direction my own country of the United States is taking in useless wars, financial irresponsibility, and exhaustion of natural resources. This book gives me hope that the future is not set in stone, and we may well find a way out of our present problems.
Thought Provoking.......2005-06-09
Found the book to be very thought provoking. I didn't always agree with what was written but in most cases the authors made a good case for their idea. The only negative was that I thought many of the stories were too short and did not give the authors time to expand on their theories.
Average customer rating:
- One of the great American novels
- One of the great books of the 20th century
- Life changing literature!
- Character + Narrative + History.... a gripping story.
- A superb and lasting work
|
The Chaneysville Incident
David Bradley
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 General
| World
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Contemporary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Literary
| General
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Historical
| Genre Fiction
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| United States
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Psychological & Suspense
| Thrillers
| Mystery & Thrillers
| Subjects
| Books
Similar Items:
-
Dessa Rose: A Novel
-
The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart
-
American Buffalo
-
The Salt Eaters
-
Corregidora
ASIN: 0060916818 |
Book Description
The legends say something happened in Chaneysville. The Chaneysville Incident is the powerful story of one man's obsession with discovering what that something was--a quest that takes the brilliant and bitter young black historian John Washington back through the secrets and buried evil of his heritage. Returning home to care for and then bury his father's closest friend and his own guardian, Old Jack Crawley, he comes upon the scant records of his family's proud and tragic history, which he drives himself to reconstruct and accept. This is the story of John's relationship with his family, the town, and the woman he loves; and also between the past and the present, between oppression and guilt, hate and violence, love and acceptance.
Customer Reviews:
One of the great American novels.......2005-01-01
This is one of the best books I have ever read. It is deeply steeped in both history and a profound sense of the limits of history. I think it has a justifiable claim to standing among the great American novels. It is well researched, and the product of a keen, nuanced, discriminating intellect that, one can tell, does not suffer fools gladly. It deals with our central American wounds, those of race and privilege. It does all of that good stuff that English teachers and critics love to rattle on about. It's just dang DEFENSIBLE on all levels as a piece of work. That being said, it would be easy to lose track of how good a novel it is. The characters are believable to me, the storytelling and the storytelling-within-the-storytelling is so rich, so deep and true, that it ends up being a good, resonant read. It satisfies the intellect, it satisfies the heart, and it keeps one reading.
I often think of this novel among the company of other novels, such as perhaps Huckleberry Finn or Moby Dick, that are slighted in their own time, their own first publication, only to have later generations say, "How did they not get it about this one?...How did they not realize what they had here?..." As with the above mentioned works, there are probably moments reading it when it feels like "work", that it feels like it's "not an easy book", but then you break through again to understanding and realize how glad you are that the author did not condescend to "easify".
I have given away many copies of this. It amazes me that it is ever out of print or hard to get hold of. It's truly one of the great stories, one of the great novels.
Buy it and read it and love it.
One of the great books of the 20th century.......2003-09-04
A favorite of mine for years. Bradley blends rich emotion with detached history to give a riveting portrait of black America, all through the eyes of a narrator who may or may not be fully rational. Readers can learn much about the actual history of America (the facts check out) as well as be riveted to a superb story.
Life changing literature!.......2002-10-13
The Chaneysville Incident was, for me, life altering. Reading it I determined to be a catalyst of change and not a victim throughout the rest of this earthly journey. I learned things about myself, my people and my purpose. If you are of African descent please read this book. If you are not of African descent please read this book. It is critical literature for contemporary America!
Character + Narrative + History.... a gripping story........2002-05-07
First,let me say my father's family was from the same part of Pennsylvania as author David Bradley, as well as the characters portrayed in "The Chaneysville Incident." Yes, those slave graves ARE on that farm. And yes, while there are those who debate the scenario surrounding those graves, Bradley's setting is entirely plausible, and his story was one that was undoubtedly acted out more than a few times in real life.
The Maryland/Pennsylvania border region has certainly had a speckled racial history, before and after the Civil War. Did slave-catchers make forays into Pennsylvania in the Ante-Bellum era? Yes. There is documentation. It was a socially complicated time, to say the least. If, for example, a southern landowner moved north above the Mason-Dixon, and wished to "keep" his human labor force, the slaves had to be legally contracted in the county for a period of indenture, usually including a freedom "purchase price" if the then former slave wished to leave his former owner. Freedmen had to carry papers, which, while documenting their status, didn't guarantee anything approaching the social status & mobility of whites. There were white families in the border townships of southern Pennsylvania, who, while they themselves didn't own slaves, had cousins and even siblings just over the border in Maryland who did. My dad's family was one like that. So, racially speaking, there was black, white, and a great deal of gray fogging the boundaries between the two.
When David Bradley's novel was first published, much of the reaction from his fellow Bedford Countians revolved around questions about the historical accuracy of his setting, coupled with the statements of "other-ness" made on behalf of the novel's main characters. Little attention was given to its overall truth as a novel, the artful way that Bradley lets the reader into the mind and perceptions of his protaganist, as he embarks on a journey of self-awareness and discovery. With him, we ask the questions "Who am I? What am I? How do I find out?
I do some work as an amateur historian and semi-professional genealogist. Time and again, I've run across stories contained in the lives of those long gone which live in the spaces between tombstones, which the names and dates only hinted at. The more you dig, and the more questions you ask, the closer you get to the truth. And, often the answers to questions you didn't even think to ask. Or were afraid to. "The Chaneysville Incident" takes the reader on such a journey, and opens an historical wound that is neither neat nor tidy. His characters are neither saints nor sinners, his sense of history is a good one, and his narrative is compelling. Read it, and then begin asking your own questions.
A superb and lasting work.......2001-08-01
The Chaneysville Incident is a great novel. Recognized immediately after its publication as an important work, it won the Penn-Faulkner award, and deservedly so. The story is powerful and expertly told, and the writing is exquisite--read the first sentence and you'll read the whole book. This book is about what we reap. What we've reaped, Bradley argues, is his main character, his historian formed by history.
Books:
- Flags of Our Fathers
- Fretboard Logic SE: The Reasoning Behind the Guitar's Unique Tuning + Chords Scales and Arpeggios Complete (The Fretboard Logic Guitar Method Parts I and II) (Fretboard Logic Guitar Method Ser)
- From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (2 Vols. in 1)
- Getting Unstuck: Breaking Your Habitual Patterns & Encountering Naked Reality
- Halfbreed: The Remarkable True Story of George Bent-Caught Between the Worlds of the Indian and the White Man
- History and Memory in African-American Culture
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Human Performance Measures Handbook
- Charlotte's Web
- The Secret Life of Puppets
- Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose
- A Table for Two: Recipes from Celebrated City Restaurants
- Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline: The 7 Basic Skills for Turning Conflict into Cooperation
- Aprendiendo A Decir Adios
- Brilliant Cv: What Employers Want to See & How to Say It
- Theory Z: How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge
- Trade Shows Worldwide 2000
Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947
The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (California Library Reprint Series)
Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz
