Book Description
Heritage, while it often constitutes and defines the most positive aspects of culture, is a malleable body of historical text subject to interpretation and easily twisted into myth. When it is appealed to on a national or ethnic level in reactions against racial, religious, or economic oppression, the result is often highly-charged political contention or conflict. The extraordinary theme of this unique book is how the rise of a manifold, crusade-like obsession with tradition and inheritance--both physical and cultural--can lead to either good or evil. In a balanced account of the pros and cons of the rhetoric and spoils of heritage--on the one hand cultural identity and unity, on the other, potential holy war--David Lowenthal discusses the myriad uses and abuses of historical appropriation and offers a rare and accessible account of a concept at once familiar and fraught with complexity. David Lowenthal is Emeritus Professor of Geography at University College London, and the author of the bestselling The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, 1985)
Customer Reviews:
Why this book sucks...........2001-10-02
This book is horribly written, poorly constructed, and really fails to argue a cohesive point. It bounces around from anecdote to story, and if anything, proves the use of history, and condemns heritage.
I disagree with the author's premise, but he doesn't provide any substance to defend his opinion.
If I could rate this book any lower, I would.
Heritage and History-Friends or Foes?.......2000-03-10
Historian David Lowenthal, author of The Heritage Crusade and Spoils of History, has managed to provide both an engrossing account on the relationship between history and heritage and an entertaining piece of literary work. The book comprises of 10 chapters, each one dealing with the evolution that heritage has experienced aswell as the contribution it makes to our lives. After reading this book one comes away with a greater understanding and appreciation for our own inherited events and objects. His use of very relevant and at the same time very interesting examples, ranging from Greek mythology to America's Disney World, allows readers to bring to life the whole concept of heritage and history. I have to admit that prior to reading this book I had the naieve notion (though common one)that heritage equated to history. However Lowenthal was able to dispel this belief by providing vivid accounts on why these two elements are so different yet inextricably intertwined. This he does by highlighting the differences in the approach of biasness by both heritage and history and also the quest for truth and objectivity.Ultimately Lowenthal shows how both history and heritage work in contemporary society and how they compliment each other. His humour, knowledge on the subject and his style of writing makes this book trully a must read for all historians and potential historians too, infact anyone interested on the topic. Enjoy Reading!
Average customer rating:
- A Provocative, but not always convincing, Discussion of the Heritage Industry
- Intriguing, but disagreeable and contradictory
|
POSSESSED BY THE PAST: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History
David Lowenthal
Manufacturer: Free Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| United States
| Americas
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Historiography
| Historical Study
| History
| Subjects
| Books
Philosophy of History
| Historical Study
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| World
| History
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0684827980 |
Amazon.com
The more things change, the more we become nostalgic about the way they once were. Perhaps because we dread the present we are tempted to seek sanctuary in our "heritage" -- a broad term that can include everything from the Pyramids at Giza to old Elvis records -- says David Lowenthal (author of
The Past is a Foreign Country). At its best, the preservation of our heritage allows us to form communities and maintain vital traditions. At its worst, it abuses real history for chauvinistic gain.
Customer Reviews:
A Provocative, but not always convincing, Discussion of the Heritage Industry.......2006-09-05
I first became interested in the issue of heritage during the preparations for the centennial of flight of the Wrights brothers celebrated in 2003. This book explores the rise of commemorations and heritage, and what it portends for the serious study of history. In one form or another commemorations of important historical events have been with us since humans have counted time. Always serving several objectives at once, in the United States these have often taken the form of publicly-recognized national holidays that enhance civic pride and national unity. The Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Veteran's Day, and the like are official commemorations designed explicitly to serve the decidedly nationalistic purpose of forging and reinforcing the cohesiveness of a people within a common memory. Memory of the past reigns supreme in such commemorations, it represents the personification of what David Lowenthal calls "heritage." His definition of heritage, and its relationship to history, is instructive: "History is the past that actually happened, heritage a partisan perversion, the past manipulated for some present aim" (p. 102)
As Lowenthal comments, the differences between this heritage--essentially what we choose to remember about the past, what some have called the "digested past"--and the unrecoverable past that is never truly knowable at all because of the inexactitude with which historians are able to discover it, sets up an enormous difficulty for historians involved in public commemoration. Heritage provides the glue that holds together the group in an instable world. Like a predator stalking weak members of a herd dissension seems to range freely over the landscape, and in a multicultural nation such as the United States the cacophony of competing ideas and issues, priorities and prerogatives thrive. Heritage, of course, helps to forge a unique identity that is real and powerful and all-encompassing, and in the processing helps define ourselves and our nation.
As a nation, Americans seem enthralled with their past and deploy it at every opportunity to achieve benefits defined differently by different groups and times. Those may range from lofty principles identifiable as such by all too crass economic motives to sinister objectives based on self-regarding chauvinism and hatred of other groups. In such a climate commemorations of historical events become the tools, or perhaps weapons, used in contorting historical truth to the ends of the group supervising the commemoration. This is, at a fundamental level, the concern that Lowenthal voices throughout "Possessed by the Past." Such activities, he warns, falsify history by succumbing to "chauvinist, shallow, vulgar, commercial, and mendacious perversions" (p. 104). As he puts it, history "differs from heritage not, as people generally supposed, in telling the truth, but in trying to do so despite being aware that truth is a chameleon and its chroniclers fallible beings. The most crucial distinction is that truth in heritage commits us to some present creed; truth in history is a flawed effort to understand the past on its own terms" (p. 119).
In "Possessed by the Past" Lowenthal ranges from special commemorations to the battle over Disney's "Historyland," the frenzied search for Elvis memorabilia, the challenges of Colonial Williamsburg, the lack of historical understanding displayed in the animated Disney film "Pocahontas," and a host of other skirmishes in the heritage wars of the 1990s. He notes that these activities pose a threat to historical understanding. "Such acts," he insists, "undeniably deform history for heritage aims; and heritage is further corrupted by being popularized, commoditized, and politicized" (p. 87).
At sum, Lowenthal can see no middle ground in what he contends is, as his subtitle notes, "the heritage crusade and the spoils of history." History as a discipline and a body of knowledge arrived at through a distinct methodology must hold a line that ensures its credibility as it faces an onslaught from popularizers, pundits, politicians, and partnerships that seek to use it for their own ends. He believes that the heritage industry is less interested in reality and verifiable concepts than in popular recreations that capture "the spirit of the age." So while history and heritage are intertwined Lowenthal does not see them as the same thing and those differences need to be made clear to all and guarded carefully in the future.
"Possessed by the Past" is a powerfully evocative book that sounds an alarm for the historical profession. At times, however, I found it infuriating, even as I found it always provocative and reflective. Lowenthal has a rather bitter perspective on the history/heritage debate. No doubt that is the result of wounds suffered in numerous battles. I am sympathetic to that situation, having experienced a few myself, but sometimes he displays his own sullenness too aggressively. For example, his "pox on both your houses" commentary is over the top. "To bolster heritage faith with historical scholarship, as is now the fashion, smudges the line between fact and faith," he writes, and "to embrace heritage as history cedes it a credence it neither asks for nor deserves" (p. 250). I believe that withdrawal from the field of battle into the proverbial ivory towers of academia does not represent a strategy for success in combating the "heritage movement" in the United States. Engagement, and offering course corrections for heritage efforts, is the only appropriate answer. To do otherwise ensures victory for those who would use history inappropriately for their own ends.
Intriguing, but disagreeable and contradictory.......2004-11-06
Did apartments in ancient Rome have doors? Did medieval towns stink? Did 17th century clothes itch? Unfortunately we don't know the answer to any of these curious questions, David Lowenthal points out in his book Possessed by the Past, because no one at the time felt such commonplaces worth recording (114). Heritage, however, has become all too commonplace, at the expense of history, Lowenthal chides in his follow-up volume to the sometimes praised, often controversial The Past is a Foreign Country.
Many of Lowenthal's arguments are intriguing. He explains that heritage now pervades modern society, especially in the West. He contends that heritage to many is escapist, permitting a person to hold on to something more stable in an uncertain world and often sentiments towards that stability override substantial concerns. Technophobia nurtures heritage and its growth reflects fears of a menacing future (10-11). Possessed by the Past shows that heritage, like history, faces continuous shifting attitudes and reinterpretations. Commemoration has transferred from personal to collective, elite to popular subjects (63). For instance, statues worldwide pay homage to the anonymous fallen, such as the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, rather than generals and admirals. Formerly taboo to come from a commoner background, these days such lineage has morphed to the chic (16).
While discussing the upsurge of heritage nowadays, Lowenthal at times contradicts himself. The first chapter describes a current "heritage glut," saying that archivists, specifically, keep everything, which causes chaos by making "augmented heritage" less accessible and "suffocatingly unmanageable" (12). Later in the book he seems to advocate saving everything and encourages an emotional attachment to the items saved to make them more meaningful for heirs, saying, "self-regard supplants intergenerational generosity (52).
In an underlying disagreeable tone, Lowenthal asserts that heritage is the antithesis of history, but unfortunately it takes him until Chapter five to concretely define heritage, though the book focuses on the word from its first page. At that point, he muses that heritage is "a declaration of faith in that past" (121). Heritage to him "uses historical traces and tells historical tales," but "exaggerates and omits, candidly invents and frankly forgets, and thrives on ignorance and error" (121). Succinctly, what counts in heritage "is not checkable fact but credulous allegiance," while history's chief hallmark is testable truth (120-121). His arguments would be more easily understood and interpreted had he made the reader know how he defined heritage from the very beginning.
Group solidarity is innate to forming and fostering heritage; Lowenthal ruminates in his conclusion (248). Heritage in his eyes builds collective pride and purpose (249). However, in the first chapter of the volume he expressly states that heritage is self-defeating, that loving things too much destroys them (27). So, in essence, heritage brings people together to destroy what they love. In the vernacular of many a student in today's age, Lowenthal concludes through the pages of Possessed by the Past: "Heritage bites, but dude, at least it brings people together once in a while."
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Manitoba History, published by Manitoba Historical Society on March 22, 2000. The length of the article is 1586 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Heritage crusade and the spoils of history.
Publication:
Manitoba History (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2000
Publisher: Manitoba Historical Society
Issue: 39
Page: 42-4
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Amazon.com
We Are Your Sisters, a collection of letters, oral histories, and excerpts from diaries and autobiographies, is "a documentary portrayal of black women who lived between 1800 and the 1880s." As such, We Are Your Sisters provides a panoramic portrait of black women's lives, presenting the words of laundresses and maids, of writers and teachers. You'll find the testimonies of slave women, as collected in the 1920s and '30s by the Federal Writers Project, on such matters as work, courtship, and family life; letters from slave women that include moving appeals for husbands to save them from slave traders; and first-person accounts of women's resistance to slavery. There are also letters from women such as Rosetta Douglass Sprague, the daughter of Frederick Douglass; accounts of the doings of upper-class blacks in the years following the Civil War; and excerpts from the diary of Frances Rollin, author of a biography of black activist and Civil War soldier Martin Delany.
Book Description
Reissued in a new trade paperback format and design, this "richly researched, sensitively edited, annotated volume portrays indelibly, in their own words, the lives of American black women" during the Civil War era. (Publishers Weekly)
Customer Reviews:
Suprised, Anger, Relief , Joy.......2003-11-28
This book is better than reality tv. It is a collection of real life accounts, diary entries, and pictures of black women in America during slavery and after emancipation.
It includes excerps from slaves, doctors, teachers, writers, womens rights and black activists, maids, cooks, laundresses, etc.
It gives a real life account of what was really going on in the 1800's in black america.
The book made me laugh, cry, get angry, etc., while reading it I went through a barrage of emotions.
Among its entertainment values, it is also very educational and informative. I had no idea that there were black female lawyers and Doctors in the 1840's in the US. Some of these people were the first female lawyers and Doctors in the US.
By and far it is good reading whether for fun or information.
Book Description
There are approximately six thousand languages on Earth today, each a descendant of the tongue first spoken by Homo sapiens some 150,000 years ago. While laying out how languages mix and mutate over time, linguistics professor John McWhorter reminds us of the variety within the species that speaks them, and argues that, contrary to popular perception, language is not immutable and hidebound, but a living, dynamic entity that adapts itself to an ever-changing human environment.
Full of humor and imaginative insight, The Power of Babel draws its illustrative examples from languages around the world, including pidgins, Creoles, and nonstandard dialects.
Customer Reviews:
An admirable effort to explain language change to laymen, but desperately needed proofreading.......2007-06-27
As a graduate student of historical linguistics, I often find myself asked to explain aspects of contemporary language change or the reconstruction of proto-languages to interested friends or family. Unfortunately, I don't have much of a gift of simplifying the field for average people, and I've longed for a simple introduction that I could recommend. I was very happy to discover John McWhorter's THE POWER OF BABEL: A Natural History of Language, which introduces historical linguistics, squashes myths about language change all too common among the public, and shows the wonderful diversity of human tongues all in an easily approachable way. McWhorter's book often succeeds, but I was troubled by some errors. This review is mainly meant towards fellow professionals also looking for a book they may give to interested acquaintances.
McWhorter's book consists of seven chapters and an epilogue. The first, "The First Language Morphs into Six Thousand New Ones", explains sound change and grammaticalization, the key processes of language evolution, mainly using French and English examples. In chapter 2, "The Six Thousand Languages Develop into Clusters of Sublanguages", McWhorter introduces the concept of "dialects", showing that within any given speech community there is a wealth of variants, mutually intelligible but excitingly diverse. Chapter 3, "The Thousands of Dialects Mix with One Another" discusses lexical borrowing, while Chapter 4, "Some Languages Are Crushed to Powder but Rise Again as New Ones" is about the most extreme case of language mixing, pidgins and creoles. Here the example pidgin is Russenorsk, that curious mix of Russian and Norwegian that don't deserve the obscurity into which it has fallen.
Chapter 5, "The Thousands of Dialects of Thousands of Languages All Developed Far Beyond the Call of Duty" is important. Here McWhorter explains the seemingly unnecessary features languages may take on, such as grammatical gender and complicated verbal inflections. He makes the important point that the shape of a language says nothing about the intelligence of the people who speak it, that a language serves its community perfectly well. Chapter 6, "Some Languages Get Genetically Altered and Frozen" is about the rise of standard languages out of writing. The final chapter is the most depressing, for "Most of the World's Languages Went Extinct" is about language death.
An epilogue, "Extra, extra! The Language of Adam and Eve" attempts to debunk the notions that a Proto-World can be constructed, which tend to appeal to the general public even though they lack any scientific basis. McWhorter devastatingly dismisses the work of e.g. Merrit Ruhlen and, in his darker hours, Joseph Greenberg, to the great applause of this reader.
Many readers have found fault with two aspects of McWhorter's book. The first is the humourous tone he adopted in trying to make the heady details of historical linguistics appealing for those without training. He makes reference to a massive amount of sitcoms and comic books, sometimes makes use of McDonald's advertising as an example of international language contact, and likes to phrase things in a clever manner. I found this unobjectionable, for McWhorter has a very similar sense of humour to my own. However, what is objectionable are the factual errors that pop up in the book. Other reviewers have mentioned some, but for the one I found most annoying, I'll throw in McWhorter's claim that Russian has borrowed from Old Church Slavonic, "based on Bulgarian". Well, Old Church Slavonic was based on the Slavonic dialect of Thessaloniki, outside the Kingdom of Bulgaria (and some notable OCS manuscripts have no connection at all to Bulgaria), and furthermore Russian didn't borrow from OCS, but rather from a later language called Church Slavonic (I don't see any yers in these borrowed words, do you?). One wonders if the book was reviewed by other members of the linguistics community before publication, or if the publisher just assumed that with a popular audience it could just throw it out there.
THE POWER OF BABEL is, as far as I know, the only book that gently explains concepts of historical linguistics to the laymen, at the same time debunking various myths of language superiority or great Eskimo vocabularies. It's worth checking out, in spite of its faults.
McWhorter Hits a Home Run.......2007-03-14
McWhorter writes an unexpectedly pleasant style for an academic. His theory is intriguing and well explained. In fact, he has challenged many of my assumptions about language and has provoked me to wonder whether I have been far too critical of non-standard dialects of my own language. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of human language.
If language drives you crazy..........2007-01-11
If language drives you crazy, if you find yourself comparing words across European languages while reading random train schedules abroad, or defending the legitimacy and grammatical coherency non-standard dialects, or just generally devoting too much time to translating verb tenses, this book is great. Even if you do not have any interest in linguistics (yet), read this book. Read Steven Pinker's as well "The Language Instinct" and you might well be bit by the bug and major in it like I did.
The style is very simple, and though I knew much of what the author covered, I thoroughly enjoyed the examples from so many different languages. Language contact and variation are my two particular favorite topics in linguistics, and I look forward to the day the Army will let me out so I can devote a few more years to full-time study. A slight obsession for me.
Extremely well written.......2006-12-31
This book might have been deadly dull if anyone but John McWhorter had written it. He carries the reader along by the sheer force of his delight in the subject and in all things popular or cultural, whence arrive his anecdotal examples that pepper the narrative and make it zesty. John McWhorter makes linguistics fun!
Great book!.......2006-12-26
This book is extremely interesting and informative for a general audience. It isn't primarily meant for college students majoring in linguistics, it is meant for people who love language but are not truly linguists. McWhorter has a very deep understanding of language development, and is very skilled at using language to describe language. I especially loved learning about creoles. :)
Book Description
This digital document is an article from American Scholar, published by Phi Beta Kappa Society on March 22, 2002. The length of the article is 2272 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Homme, hombre, omul.(THE POWER OF BABEL: A NATURAL HISTORY OF LANGUAGE )
Author: Jim Holt
Publication:
American Scholar (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2002
Publisher: Phi Beta Kappa Society
Volume: 71
Issue: 2
Page: 142(4)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Customer Reviews:
An admirable effort to explain language change to laymen, but desperately needed proofreading.......2007-06-27
As a graduate student of historical linguistics, I often find myself asked to explain aspects of contemporary language change or the reconstruction of proto-languages to interested friends or family. Unfortunately, I don't have much of a gift of simplifying the field for average people, and I've longed for a simple introduction that I could recommend. I was very happy to discover John McWhorter's THE POWER OF BABEL: A Natural History of Language, which introduces historical linguistics, squashes myths about language change all too common among the public, and shows the wonderful diversity of human tongues all in an easily approachable way. McWhorter's book often succeeds, but I was troubled by some errors. This review is mainly meant towards fellow professionals also looking for a book they may give to interested acquaintances.
McWhorter's book consists of seven chapters and an epilogue. The first, "The First Language Morphs into Six Thousand New Ones", explains sound change and grammaticalization, the key processes of language evolution, mainly using French and English examples. In chapter 2, "The Six Thousand Languages Develop into Clusters of Sublanguages", McWhorter introduces the concept of "dialects", showing that within any given speech community there is a wealth of variants, mutually intelligible but excitingly diverse. Chapter 3, "The Thousands of Dialects Mix with One Another" discusses lexical borrowing, while Chapter 4, "Some Languages Are Crushed to Powder but Rise Again as New Ones" is about the most extreme case of language mixing, pidgins and creoles. Here the example pidgin is Russenorsk, that curious mix of Russian and Norwegian that don't deserve the obscurity into which it has fallen.
Chapter 5, "The Thousands of Dialects of Thousands of Languages All Developed Far Beyond the Call of Duty" is important. Here McWhorter explains the seemingly unnecessary features languages may take on, such as grammatical gender and complicated verbal inflections. He makes the important point that the shape of a language says nothing about the intelligence of the people who speak it, that a language serves its community perfectly well. Chapter 6, "Some Languages Get Genetically Altered and Frozen" is about the rise of standard languages out of writing. The final chapter is the most depressing, for "Most of the World's Languages Went Extinct" is about language death.
An epilogue, "Extra, extra! The Language of Adam and Eve" attempts to debunk the notions that a Proto-World can be constructed, which tend to appeal to the general public even though they lack any scientific basis. McWhorter devastatingly dismisses the work of e.g. Merrit Ruhlen and, in his darker hours, Joseph Greenberg, to the great applause of this reader.
Many readers have found fault with two aspects of McWhorter's book. The first is the humourous tone he adopted in trying to make the heady details of historical linguistics appealing for those without training. He makes reference to a massive amount of sitcoms and comic books, sometimes makes use of McDonald's advertising as an example of international language contact, and likes to phrase things in a clever manner. I found this unobjectionable, for McWhorter has a very similar sense of humour to my own. However, what is objectionable are the factual errors that pop up in the book. Other reviewers have mentioned some, but for the one I found most annoying, I'll throw in McWhorter's claim that Russian has borrowed from Old Church Slavonic, "based on Bulgarian". Well, Old Church Slavonic was based on the Slavonic dialect of Thessaloniki, outside the Kingdom of Bulgaria (and some notable OCS manuscripts have no connection at all to Bulgaria), and furthermore Russian didn't borrow from OCS, but rather from a later language called Church Slavonic (I don't see any yers in these borrowed words, do you?). One wonders if the book was reviewed by other members of the linguistics community before publication, or if the publisher just assumed that with a popular audience it could just throw it out there.
THE POWER OF BABEL is, as far as I know, the only book that gently explains concepts of historical linguistics to the laymen, at the same time debunking various myths of language superiority or great Eskimo vocabularies. It's worth checking out, in spite of its faults.
Customer Reviews:
well-intentioned, but flawed, guidebook.......1999-02-25
This book has many typographical errors and some scientific errors as well. Intended to reach a nonscientific audience, the authors have oversimplified many topics to the point of giving incorrect information. Nonexpert secondary teachers, for whom the book is intended, will not be well-served and will convey incorrect information to their students if they rely heavily on this volume to the exclusion of other scholarly references in the areas of limnology, zoology, entomology, and general biology. Other general guidebooks, such as the Golden Guides or National Audobon Series provide better information, although not tailored for an educational purpose. Teachers should use this book with caution with respect to the scientific material. Although the science-in-action concept is pedagogically appealing, there are too many errors in this book. With a thorough editing by a knowledgeable expert, this could be a useful tool for the high school classroom.
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- The Methods and Skills of History: A Practical Guide
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- The New York Public Library Amazing Women in American History: A Book of Answers for Kids (The New York Public Library Books for Kids)
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