WHO OWNS HISTORY? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World

Eric Foner

ISBN 10: 0809097044 / ISBN 13: 9780809097043

Published by Hill and Wang, New York, 2002

About this Item

233p. A hardcover book in essentially fine condition with a like dustjacket. Top corners lightly bumped, but otherwise clean and tight, and jacket fully intact.

Seller Inventory # 194842

Bibliographic Details

• Title: WHO OWNS HISTORY? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World
• Publisher: Hill and Wang, New York
• Publication Date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0809097044
• ISBN 13: 9780809097043
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition, First Printing.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Seller catalogs:
  • World History

About this title

Synopsis

A thought-provoking new book from one of America's finest historians

"History," wrote James Baldwin, "does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do."

Rarely has Baldwin's insight been more forcefully confirmed than during the past few decades. History has become a matter of public controversy, as Americans clash over such things as museum presentations, the flying of the Confederate flag, or reparations for slavery. So whose history is being written? Who owns it?

In Who Owns History?, Eric Foner proposes his answer to these and other questions about the historian's relationship to the world of the past and future. He reconsiders his own earlier ideas and those of the pathbreaking Richard Hofstadter. He also examines international changes during the past two decades--globalization, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of apartheid in South Africa--and their effects on historical consciousness. He concludes with considerations of the enduring, but often misunderstood, legacies of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. This is a provocative, even controversial, study of the reasons we care about history--or should.

About the Author

Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. He is the author of many highly acclaimed works in American history, notably The Story of American Freedom and Reconstruction. He lives in New York City.