Long Shadows - Softcover

Erna Paris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747558043 ISBN 13: 9780747558040

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2002

Synopsis

In her major study the historian Erna Paris addresses one of the most urgent issues facing the world today - who owns and controls the past? - for decisions taken by those in power cast long shadows into the future. It is a powerful theme, but what makes her book compelling reading is that she pursues these demanding moral questions as a personal quest, building up the big picture from a series of intimate conversations with people who have lived that history or are living with its consequences. Starting with the aftermath of World War II in France, Germany and Japan, she loops back to the legacy of slavery in the American South, before moving on to South Africa, Bosnia and Rwanda, and to Argentina and Chile as she charts two competing drives - the potentially corrupting desire to control the past in order to shape the future and the aspiration to achieve a standard of universal justice.

About this title

From the Publisher

'I would love to see this book taught in every history class in America.' -Iris Chang, author of The Rape of Nanking
'Enlightening...Riveting...Paris raises questions of enormous importance.' -Kirkus
'...convincingly demonstrates that memory is not only selective but subject to calculated efforts to serve personal needs and national interests.' -The Christian Science Monitor
'Paris gives us a rich, if painful, inventory of the recent, dubious uses to which we are putting the past.' -Washington Post Book World

From the Back Cover

"The reader is changed forever by reading Long Shadows. Working one's way through this book is akin to listening to complete symphonies of Gustav Mahler in a single sitting—an overwhelming experience, one that raises the profound philosophical questions of our time. Paris's analysis and storytelling talents never let the reader go. Deeply moving." —Quill and Quire

“[an] ambitious…superb work of popular history and thought. [a] brilliantly conceived quest… Long Shadows is simply first-rate writing…an intellectual triumph, in its refusal to succumb to denial and its hopeful faith that it’s better to know.” —Stan Persky, Vancouver Sun

"[Erna] Paris…intelligently examines [memory] within the context of national remembrance." — Canadian Jewish News

"[ Long Shadows] rings with the moral authority of a voice raised in defence of human rights and cries out for no-amnesty accountability for war crimes." — Montreal Gazette

"[a] powerful and sombre book…Paris’s belief in an honest search for the facts…is admirable and ultimately inspiring." — The Globe and Mail

”[Paris] walks with a keen eye, a journalist’s skill at detail…a high intelligence and a deft pen…. [A] timely contribution.” — Ottawa CItizen

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0747558043
• ISBN 13: 9780747558040
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512