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The Past is a Foreign Country

The Past is a Foreign Country

by David Lowenthal (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 1985

    $7.62
Synopsis

In this remarkably wide-ranging book Professor Lowenthal analyses the ever-changing role of the past in shaping our lives. A heritage at once nurturing and burdensome, the past allows us to make sense of the present whilst imposing powerful constraints upon the way that present develops. Some aspects of the past are celebrated, others expunged, as each generation reshapes its legacy in line with current needs. Drawing on all the arts, the humanities and the social sciences, the author uses sources as diverse as science fiction and psychoanalysis to examine how rebellion against inherited tradition has given rise to the modern cult of preservation and pervasive nostalgia. Profusely illustrated, The Past is a Foreign Country shows that although the past has ceased to be a sanction for inherited power or privilege, as a focus of personal and national identity and as a bulwark against massive and distressing change it remains as potent a force as ever in human affairs.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 516
 Edition: First Edition
 Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 14 Nov 1985
ISBN 10: 0521294800
ISBN 13: 9780521294805
Book Overview: In this remarkably wide-ranging book Professor Lowenthal analyses the ever-changing role of the past in shaping our lives.

Media Reviews
'An impressive achievement: it assembles and categorizes man's attitudes towards his past in a fashion attempted nowhere else.' John Dixon Hunt, The Times Higher Education Supplement
' ... a marvellously entertaining book.' John Kenyon, The Observer
'Lowenthal writes brilliantly, revealing a sweeping grasp of art, literature and philosophy as well as the twists and turns of history.' Myron A. Marty, St Louis Post-Dispatch
'A work of singular merit and grace.' David Keymer, Library Journal
'David Lowenthal gives us a new understanding of a universal human experience by imaginatively refashioning the remains and records of the past in England and America from the renaissance to our own time ... a significant milestone in the history of thought and culture.' Merle Curti, University of Wisconsin
' ... a tour de force, staggering in the breadth of its approach and eclecticism.' Council for British Archaeology Newsletter
'Highly original, erudite, ... this imaginative book dislodges deeply held assumptions.' Publishers Weekly
'David Lowenthal offers us a meditation on misuse of the past in contemporary culture, and by so doing makes a brilliant contribution to our understanding of the present ... bold in generalizations yet firmly grounded in particulars rich with human interest.' Michael Kammen, Cornell University
'Everything distinguishable about the past is here ... a book which you will enjoy if you know that the past attracts you, or if you think that you are immune to its power or its spell.' Peter Laslet, Washington Post
This book is splendid on nostalgia, too, and marvelous on those little bits and pieces from the vanished past which serve to legitimate and celebrate. Best of all to my mind, in an amazing array of illustrations, is the tacked-up timber Grecian pediment presiding over the shack which houses a branch of the Security Marine Bank of Madison, Wisconsin. It is, as you will see, a book which you will enjoy, if you know that the past attracts you, or if you think you are immune to its spell... Washington Post Book World
David Lowenthal gives us a new understanding of a univeral human experience by imaginatively refashioning the remains and records of the past in England and America from the Reanaissance to our own time...a significant milestone in the history of thought and culture. Merle Curti, University of Wisconsin