Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory

Shows how popularized historical images and narratives deeply influence Americans' understanding of their collective past. This book observes that we are a people who think of ourselves as having shed the past but also tourists who are on a 'heritage binge, ' flocking by the thousands to Ellis Island, Colonial Williamsburg, or the Vietnam Memorial

In essays that previously appeared in the Radical History Review, Wallace (history, CUNY) explores the purposes of museums, particularly as popular tourist attractions. He is concerned with what the people who started museums originally had in mind to attract poor people and immigrants, for example, in the large urban technology museums and the early, mostly rural reconstructions such as Colonial Williamsburg. In his later chapters, Wallace deals with recent controversies such as the Enola Gay exhibit and Disney's America. He writes from a radical viewpoint in proposing the necessity of bringing people of color into museums; this is usually worn lightly but can become didactic. His style is lively and his musings productive, but the book's ideological focus (and, for the cloth edition, bloated price) make it a purchase only for libraries collecting heavily in curatorship or local history.?Fritz Alan Buckallew, Univ. of Central Oklahoma Lib., Edmond
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