by Stephen Carl Arch (1994)
Seventeenth-century New Englanders learned a sense of community in a variety of ways. Though they absorbed much through the thousands of sermons they heard throughout their lifetimes, written histories also helped to shape common ideas. Authorizing the Past reveals a developing strand of historical discourse that was as important as the pulpit literature for creating a sense of "national" identity for the people of seventeenth-century New England. This first book-length analysis of seventeenth-century Puritan histories demonstrates the growing professionalism and sophistication of New England historiography as a genre in its own right. Arch focuses on rhetorical strategies, narrative techniques, and evidentiary conventions to show how the profession of history developed in the first seventy years of settlement in New England. Arch concludes that narrative histories are fictional constructs designed to effect changes in their audiences and the societies in which they live. Authorizing the Past will engage anyone interested in the convergence between history and fiction, as well as students of colonial American literature, history, and culture.
MARHO, the radical historians organization
"Interviews with E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, Sheila Rowbotham, Linda Gordon, Natalie Zemon Davis, William Appleman Williams, Staughton Lynd, David Montgomery, Herbert Gutman, Vincent Harding, John Womack, C.L.R. James, Moshe Lewin." Includes bibliographies and index.
Kate Davies
"Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren were radical friends in a revolutionary age. They produced definitive histories of the English Civil War and the American Revolution, attacked the British government and the United States federal constitution, and instigated a debate on women's rights which inspired Mary Wollstonecraft, Judith Sargent Murray, and other feminists. Drawing on new research (including recently discovered correspondence) this is the first book to consider Macaulay and Warren in the context of the revolutionary Atlantic. In a series of detailed interdisciplinary studies. Davies suggests the centrality of both women to transatlantic political cultures between the middle of the eighteenth century and the turn of the nineteenth."--BOOK JACKET.
Julian Stockwin
"As the captain of a useful frigate, Kydd is claimed by the Leeward Islands station, exchanging the harsh situation in South America for the warmth and delights of the Caribbean. It's a sea change for Kydd, who revisits places and people that figured in his time as a young seaman. Some are nostalgic and pleasing, while others bring challenges of a personal nature. In Europe, Napoleon is triumphant on land, but so far away in the Caribbean, Kydd and the others feel secure and make the most of running down prizes and sending off fat convoys of sugar to England. But, in a stroke of genius, Bonaparte finds a way to take revenge for Trafalgar and shocks Kydd out of complacency when an element from his past returns and Kydd is accused of murder. In a stroke of irony, it is that same past that may just provide Kydd the means to clear his name"--
Emily D. Johnson
"In the bookshops of present-day St. Petersburg, guidebooks abound. Both modern descriptions of Russia's old imperial capital and lavish new editions of pre-Revolutionary texts sell well, primarily attracting an audience of local residents. Why do Russians read one- and two-hundred-year-old guidebooks to a city they already know well? In How St. Petersburg Learned to Study Itself, Emily Johnson traces the Russian fascination with local guides to the idea of kraevedenie." "Johnson traces the history of kraevedenie, showing how St. Petersburg-based scholars and institutions have played a central role in the evolution of the discipline. Distinguished from obvious Western equivalents such as cultural geography and the German Heimatkunde by both its dramatic history and unique social significance, kraevedenie has, for close to a hundred years, served as a key forum for expressing concepts of regional and national identity within Russian culture."--Jacket.