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The past remains essential - and inescapable. A quarter-century after the publication of his classic account of man's attitudes to his past, David Lowenthal revisits how we celebrate, expunge, contest and domesticate the past to serve present needs. He shows how nostalgia and heritage now pervade every facet of public and popular culture. History embraces nature and the cosmos as well as humanity. The past is seen and touched and tasted and smelt as well as heard and read about. Empathy, re-enactment, memory and commemoration overwhelm traditional history. A unified past once certified by experts and reliant on written texts has become a fragmented, contested history forged by us all. New insights into history and memory, bias and objectivity, artefacts and monuments, identity and authenticity, and remorse and contrition, make this book once again the essential guide to the past that we inherit, reshape and bequeath to the future.
Lowentahal looks at the benefits and burdens of the past, how we study the past, and how we change it.
Is unity of knowledge possible? Is it desirable? Two rival visions clash. One seeks a single way of explaining everything known and knowable about ourselves and the universe. The other champions diverse modes of understanding served by disparate kinds of evidence. Contrary views pit science against the arts and humanities. Scientists generally laud and seek convergence. Artists and humanists deplore amalgamation as a threat to humane values. These opposing perspectives flamed into hostility in the 1950s "Two Cultures" clash. They culminate today in new efforts to conjoin insights into physical nature and human culture, and new fears lest such syntheses submerge what the arts and humanities m...
A paperback edition of a critically-acclaimed 1998 study of the meaning and effects of 'Heritage'.
The idea that the heritage of nature is fundamentally cultural is provocative to many, but it is becoming increasingly accepted in the context of heritage preservation. It is argued here that a person’s perspective on natural vs. cultural heritage as a contested patrimony is, to some extent, governed by one’s intellectual and geographical position. In discourses influenced by the natural sciences culture is a heritage of nature, whereas in those deriving from the humanities and social sciences, nature is defined socio-culturally. There is also, however, a geographical dimension to how one looks at the nature culture relation. From at least the time of Aristotle, the North has been identi...
'History is written by the winners' is the received wisdom. This book explains why historical interpretation has to incorporate perspectives from those other than 'winners', and demonstrates archaeology's crucial role in this wide-ranging approach. The book draws more on Africa, Afro-America, Australasia and Oceania than on Europe, the source of the traditionally dominant perspective in archaeology. The four organizing themes of The Politics of the Past are the forms and consequences of the Eurocentric heritage, the conflicting perspectives of rulers and ruled, the significance of administrative and institutional rivalries, and the cleavages that divide professional from popular views of archaeology. Archaeologists, anthropologists, historians and other scholars will find The Politics of the Past illuminating and provocative. It will enrich historical and archaeological inquiry and interpretation, and ramify their relevance for public policy.
In separate chapters on The Tempest, King Lear, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, and A Midsummer Night's Dream (many of which have appeared elsewhere in journals or essay collections), the author explores Shakespeare's philosophy and examines its treatment by other critics, from Ben Jonson to A.C. Bradley. He contends that Shakespeare was an independently thinking follower of the classical philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and explores such themes as the playwright's treatment of the philosopher king, natural versus conventional justice, contending views of the best regime and the best life, the moral character of the universe, the Biblical alternative to classical philosophy, and the Christian view of temperance. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The past remains essential - and inescapable. A quarter-century after the publication of his classic account of man's attitudes to his past, David Lowenthal revisits how we celebrate, expunge, contest and domesticate the past to serve present needs. He shows how nostalgia and heritage now pervade every facet of public and popular culture. History embraces nature and the cosmos as well as humanity. The past is seen and touched and tasted and smelt as well as heard and read about. Empathy, re-enactment, memory and commemoration overwhelm traditional history. A unified past once certified by experts and reliant on written texts has become a fragmented, contested history forged by us all. New insights into history and memory, bias and objectivity, artefacts and monuments, identity and authenticity, and remorse and contrition, make this book once again the essential guide to the past that we inherit, reshape and bequeath to the future.
George Perkins Marsh (1801–1882) was the first to reveal the menace of environmental misuse, to explain its causes, and to prescribe reforms. David Lowenthal here offers fresh insights, from new sources, into Marsh’s career and shows his relevance today, in a book which has its roots in but wholly supersedes Lowenthal’s earlier biography George Perkins Marsh: Versatile Vermonter (1958). Marsh’s devotion to the repair of nature, to the concerns of working people, to women’s rights, and to historical stewardship resonate more than ever. His Vermont birthplace is now a national park chronicling American conservation, and the crusade he launched is now global. Marsh’s seminal book Ma...
A carefully curated library of the world's greatest literature. Dover Thrift Editions are the most affordable choice for today's readers. The series offers a vast selection of complete and unabridged titles, each a classic work of fiction, nonfiction, poetry or drama. Book jacket.