Disasters and Heroes: On War, Memory and Representation - Hardcover

Calder, Angus

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0708318681 ISBN 13: 9780708318683

Publisher: University of Wales Press, 2004

Synopsis

Images of war and its commemoration are an everyday presence in contemporary culture, from the embedded reporter in the field to the Last Post at the Menin Gate.  Disasters and Heroes: On War, Memory and Representation revisits campaigns from the plains of Troy to recent events in the Balkans, examining how wars are represented and remembered.  Angus Calder shows how the 'facts'of war are transformed into myths that condition later responses to war, and how the construction of memory begins with wartime events themselves. Beginning with a section devoted to war memorials and the public remembrance of war, such as D-Day commemorations, the essays collected in Disasters and Heroes then look at the lived experience of war for 'ordinary' people, while the final section deals with literary representation of war, from The Iliad to T.E. Lawrence and on to Christa Wolf's Cassandra.  Disasters and Heroes is a thought-provoking collection dealing with issues of major significance which recent events have made painfully topical.

About this title

About the Author:

Angus Calder, formerly Reader in Cultural Studies at the Open University in Scotland, is a member of the advisory committee of the Centre for Second World War Studies at Edinburgh University. He has published numerous books, including The People's War: Britain 1939-45 (1969), Revolutionary Empire: The Rise of the English-Speaking Empires from the Fifteenth Century to the 1780s (1981), The Myth of the Blitz (1991), and Revolving Culture: Notes from the Scottish Republic (1994).

Review:

“ . . . a thoughtful and learned collection with the essay on Crete being a real highlight. Calder’s lightness of touch and wryness of tone means everything in here is never less than well done.” –Chapman

(Chapman)

“. . . highly readable . . . From Troy to Kossovo, we 'understand' what happened first from factual accounts and then, with the passage of time, from the myths that are spun around them . . . I have greatly enjoyed this book and recommend it warmly . . .” --www.gwales.com

(www.gwales.com)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0708318681
• ISBN 13: 9780708318683
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304