The past has long fingers into the present, but they are not just the fingers of fact. How we remember the past is at least as important as the objective facts of that past. The memories used by a people to define itself have to be understood not just as (sometimes) bad history but also as historical artifacts themselves. Texas' pasts are examined in this groundbreaking volume, featuring chapters by a wide range of scholars. Current historians' views of Texas in the nineteenth century and especially the significance of the Alamo as a site of memory in architecture, art, and film across the years comprise a major element of this volume. Other nineteenth-century historical events are also examined through their memorializations in the twentieth century: the construction of Civil War monuments by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, public and private Juneteenth celebrations, and the Tejano memorial on the Capitol grounds commemorating the history of Mexicans in Texas. Twentieth-century chapters include collective memories and meaning attached to the Ku Klux Klan, the significance of the civil rights movement in the eyes of different generations of Texans, and the lasting (or fading) Texan memories of Lyndon Baines Johnson. The volume editors offer these studies as a model of how Texas historians can begin to incorporate memory into their work, as historians of other regions have done. In the process, they offer a more nuanced and even a more applied version of Texas history than many of us learned in school. GREGG CANTRELL is the Erma and Ralph Lowe Professor of History at Texas Christian University and the author of Stephen F. Austin: Empresario of Texas. ELIZABETH HAYES TURNER, an associate professor at the University of North Texas, is the author of Women, Culture, and Community: Religion and Reform in Galveston, 1880-1920.

The first book to examine in detail Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History Benjamin's collection of fragments, Theses on the Philosophy of History, play a determining role in how Benjamin's thought is understood, as well as in the debate about the interplay between politics, history and time. Walter Benjamin and History is the first volume to give access to the themes and problems raised by the Theses, providing valuable exegetical and historical work on the text. The essays collected here are all the work of noted Benjamin scholars, and pursue the themes central to the Theses.

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web provides for the first time a plainspoken and thorough introduction to the web for historians-teachers and students, archivists and museum curators, professors as well as amateur enthusiasts-who wish to produce online historical work or to build upon and improve the projects they have already started in this important new medium. The book takes the reader step by step through planning a project, understanding the technologies involved and how to choose the appropriate ones, designing a site that is both easy to use and scholarly, digitizing materials in a way that makes them web-friendly while preserving their historical integrity, and reaching and responding to an intended audience effectively. It also explores the repercussions of copyright law and fair use for scholars in a digital age and examines more cutting-edge web techniques involving interactivity, such as sites that use the medium to solicit and collect historical artifacts. Finally, the book provides basic guidance for ensuring that the digital history the reader creates will not disappear in a few years. Throughout, Digital History maintains a realistic sense of the advantages and disadvantages of putting historical documents, interpretations, and discussions online. The authors write in a tone that makes Digital History accessible to those with little knowledge of computers, while including a host of details that more technically savvy readers will find helpful. And although the book focuses particularly on historians, those working in related fields in the humanities and social sciences will also find this to be a useful introduction. Digital History builds upon more than a decade of experience and expertise in creating pioneering and award-winning work by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

At the End of an Age isa deeply informed and rewarding reflection on the nature of historical and scientific knowledge. Of extraordinary philosophical, religious, and historical scope, it is the product of a great historian's lifetime of thought on the subject of his discipline and the human condition. While running counter to most of the accepted ideas and doctrines of our time, it offers a compelling framework for understanding history, science, and man's capacity for self-knowledge. In this work, John Lukacs describes how we in the Western world have now been living through the ending of an entire historical age that began in Western Europe about five hundred years ago. Unlike people during the ending of the Middle Ages or the Roman empire, we can know where we are. But how and what is it that we know? In John Lukacs's view, there is no science apart from scientists, and all of "Science," including our view of the universe, is a human creation, imagined and defined by fallible human beings in a historical continuum. This radical and reactionary assertion-in its way a summa ofthe author's thinking, expressed here and there in many of his previous twenty-odd books-leads to his fundamental assertion that, contrary to all existing cosmological doctrines and theories, it is this earth which is the very center of the universe-the only universe we know and can know.

"A great resource for students and scholars. Chock-full of up-to-date, reliable information, this book has practically everything you need to know about contemporary Colombia all in one package." --Herbert Braun, author of Our Guerrillas, Our Sidewalks: A Journey into the Violence of Colombia The South American nation of Colombia has seen more than forty years of unrest, conflict, and civil war. It is a country in which social violence and warfare are intricately intertwined. Colombia is also notorious for its drug trade, being one of the leading producers of cocaine in the world, and for its central role as a staging ground for the U.S. "war on drugs." Since 9/11 the Bush administration has sought to draw political links between the Colombian drug trade, guerrilla organizations, and terrorism. Inside Colombia offers a valuable introduction and quick reference guide to this complex nation. With chapters devoted to history, human rights issues, the economy, drugs, the controversial antidrug intervention known as Plan Colombia, and relations with the United States, the book offers an easily accessible and comprehensive overview. Readers will learn about the major players in the conflicts, significant political figures, how Colombia's economy has fared in the twentieth century, how the country's geography influences its politics and economy, and how U.S. intervention shapes Colombia's political scene. Grace Livingstone is a journalist who regularly contributes to a range of publications on Latin American current affairs and has reported for the BBC World Service. She is currently based in Venezuela where she is a correspondent for The Guardian. Jenny Pearce is the coauthor of Civil Society and Development: A Critical Exploration.

History in Transit comprises Dominick LaCapra's explorations of relationships he believes have been insufficiently theorized: between experience and identity, between history and various theories of subjectivity, between extreme events and their representation, between institutional structures and the kinds of knowledge produced within them. Taken together, these discussions form a dialogical encounter, positing the links among epistemological questions, historicist ones, and issues pertaining to disciplinary and institutional politics.

Reacting against the antitheoretical bias of some prominent historians, LaCapra presents an alternative model of historiographical practice one in which emphases on plurality and hybridity are combined with the concept of historical experience. For LaCapra experience emerges as a category both theoretically determined and anchored in the facticity of the everyday. LaCapra tests the assumptions and implications of the way one approaches the past by looking to psychoanalysis to render more self-aware the relationship between the historian and his or her material. He offers criticisms of assumptions held by practicing historians and theorists, placing the study of history at the center of a larger argument about the role of the contemporary university.

Contesting both corporatization and claims that the university is in ruins, LaCapra writes, "It is paradoxical that the demand to make the university conform to an ever-increasing extent to a market or business model seems oblivious to the fact that the American university has probably been the most successful of its type in the world, that students from other countries disproportionately desire to study in it.""

Anthropologist Neil L. Whitehead presents a collection of recent fieldwork and the latest theoretical perspectives that illuminate how a range of Native communities in the Amazon River basin, and those they encounter, use the past to make sense of their world and themselves. In recent decades, scholars have become increasingly aware of the role the past plays in the construction of culture and identity. Not only can the past be represented and codified overtly in various ways and media as a "history," it also operates more fundamentally and pervasively in cultures as a mode of consciousness or way of thinking about the world, a "historicity." In addition to examining the particular foundations and significance of history and historicity in such communities as the Guaja, Wapishana, Dekuana, and Patamuna, the contributors to this volume consider more broadly how different natural and cultural features can help shape historical consciousness: landscape and territory; rituals such as feasting; genealogy and kinship; and even the practice of archaeology. Also of interest are activist uses of historicity to promote and legitimize the cultural integrity and political agendas of Native communities, especially in contact situations past and present where multiple and often competing forms of history and historicity play important political roles in articulating relations between colonizers and the colonized. As this volume makes clear, understanding the powerful cultural role of the past helps scholars better appreciate the inherent dynamic quality of all cultures and recognize a rich resource of agency that can be used both to comprehend and to transform the present

With the end of the Cold War, the American political establishment perceived Islam as the new enemy. The 1993 explosion at the World Trade Center, the 1998 bombing of the American embassies in Africa, and the events of 9/11 - all culminated in substantiating this perception.

The War on Terrorism has raised several complicated issues surrounding the relationship between the United States and Islam. With America's increasing involvement in the Middle East, it is imperative for Muslims to understand America; but at the same time, Americans must learn to understand Islam. The progress of civilization hangs on the ability for cooperation and understanding between these cultures.

Although this challenge of removing the "clash" between these two cultures is indeed pressing, it is not new. Negative images of Islam have persisted in the United States throughout its history.

This volume of "The Annals" reflects on how damaging images of Islam have endured in the United States and how Americans' perceptions and misconceptions about Islam is inexorably linked to United States' policy in the Middle East.

The articles in this special issue will spark intriguing debate and discussion as well as shed light on the complex concerns engulfing Americans' ideas about Islam and Muslim states and how this relationship influences global politics.

With the end of the Cold War, the American political establishment perceived Islam as the new enemy. The 1993 explosion at the World Trade Center, the 1998 bombing of the American embassies in Africa, and the events of 9/11 - all culminated in substantiating this perception.

The War on Terrorism has raised several complicated issues surrounding the relationship between the United States and Islam. With America's increasing involvement in the Middle East, it is imperative for Muslims to understand America; but at the same time, Americans must learn to understand Islam. The progress of civilization hangs on the ability for cooperation and understanding between these cultures.

Although this challenge of removing the "clash" between these two cultures is indeed pressing, it is not new. Negative images of Islam have persisted in the United States throughout its history.

This volume of "The Annals" reflects on how damaging images of Islam have endured in the United States and how Americans' perceptions and misconceptions about Islam is inexorably linked to United States' policy in the Middle East.

The articles in this special issue will spark intriguing debate and discussion as well as shed light on the complex concerns engulfing Americans' ideas about Islam and Muslim states and how this relationship influences global politics.

As in the present, past peoples commemorated, constructed, and manipulated their past for their own social and political ends. Archaeologists can use a variety of evidence to study social memory and to recover past ideas about what the more distant past was like. "Archaeologies of Memory" is a groundbreaking text that presents a coherent framework for the study of memory in past societies.

This unique collection of new essays brings together contributions from both anthropological and classical archaeologists. Essays, drawn from a variety of cultures and time periods, engage a number of common themes, such as issues of authority and identity, and the role memory plays in their creation and transformation. "Archaeologies of Memory" is an accessible investigation into the central issues in the study of memory and provides an engaging introduction to this controversial subject.

Until the 1960s and the advent of African independence, African history was rarely concerned with African lives. Africans were not considered fitting subjects or authoritative sources for historical research and their voices and experiences were largely absent from the continent's history. Efforts to restore African expression to African history have characterized much of postcolonial historical research and writing, but questions about the use of oral sources in the quest for truth continue to plague interpreters and interpretations of the African past. This analysis reveals African historians involved with and committed to developing unique methodologies for dealing with history on their own terms. African historians from North America, Europe and Africa confront questions such as the relationship between a community's oral and written history, the role of personal histories, the effects of racism and colonialism, the suppression of facts, and how historians should mediate and interpret research data.; Focusing on all areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, the essays brought together here seek to reflect the extraordinary range of engagement that represents the state-of-the-art of African h

Geillustreerde verslae van mense wat die tweede Vryheidsoorlog deurleef het. Dit gee 'n goeie beeld van wat die mense moes deurmaak en wat in die kampe aangegaan het. 'n Audio-band is ingesluit by die prys van die boekie.

From Reliable Sources is a lively introduction to historical methodology, an overview of the techniques historians must master in order to reconstruct the past. Its focus on the basics of source criticism, rather than on how to find references or on the process of writing, makes it an invaluable guide for all students of history and for anyone who must extract meaning from written and unwritten sources.

Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier explore the methods employed by historians to establish the reliability of materials; how they choose, authenticate, decode, compare, and, finally, interpret those sources. Illustrating their discussion with examples from the distant past as well as more contemporary events, they pay particular attention to recent information media, such as television, film, and videotape.

The authors do not subscribe to the positivist belief that the historian can attain objective and total knowledge of the past. Instead, they argue that each generation of historians develops its own perspective, and that our understanding of the past is constantly reshaped by the historian and the world he or she inhabits.

A substantially revised and updated edition of Prevenier's Uit goede bron, originally published in Belgium and now in its seventh edition, From Reliable Sources also provides a survey of western historiography and an extensive research bibliography.

A new essay focusing on the contribution of Chinua Achebe's writing to Africa's literary and political life, from the standpoint of the early twenty-first century, and the present state of Africa. The essay is interdisciplinary drawing on history, politics and economics, conflict theory and literary criticism. It is wide in scope, discussing a breadth of topics such as imbalances in trade relations between Africa and the rest; the inefficacy and hypocrisy of Western aid in light of debt and the arms supply from the West; genocide and HIV; and the implications of current US uni-polar dominance for Africa. In the context of his study Ekwe-Ekwe celebrates what he argues are the seminal dimensions of Achebe's writings: which affirm an African historicity; point to the futility of an unreconstructed post-colonial state in leading Africa's reconstruction; and advocate an African renaissance based on Africa's critical engagement with its rich cultural heritage. The author is a Professor of history and politics and Director of the centre for Cross-Cultural Studies, Dakar.

This important book charts the development of philosophical thinking about history over the past 250 years, combining extracts from key texts with new explanatory and critical discussion. The book is designed to make the work of thinkers such as Hume, Herder, Hegel, Dilthey, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Foucault accessible to students with no prior knowledge of Western philosophy.
An introductory section is followed by nine further chapters exploring contrasting schools of thought. The volume reveals the origins of contemporary trends in the discipline and relates wider philosophical reflections to the study of history itself. It also points to connections between philosophy of history and literary and cultural theory which have developed in recent decades.

How do ancient historians pursue their craft? From the evidence of coins, pottery shards, remains of buildings, works of art, and, above all, literary texts -- all of which have survived more or less accidentally from antiquity -- they fashion works of history. But how exactly do they go about reconstructing and representing the past? How should history be written?

These and related questions are the subject of Neville Morley's engaging introduction to the theory and philosophy of history. Intended for students and teachers not only of ancient history but of historiography, the philosophy of history, and classics, his book addresses the implications of debates over methodological and theoretical issues for the practice of ancient history.

At the present time, Morley says, students of ancient history are left to come to their own understanding of the field through a process of trial and error. In his view, too many professors regard "questions of theory and methodology ... as pointless distractions from the business of actually doing history. Worse, (these questions) may even be perceived as a threat to the subject." Asserting that more attention must be given to fundamental matters, Morley considers such topics as the nature of historical narrative, style in historical writing, the use and abuse of sources, and the reasons for studying history.

Herodotus, widely known as the father of history, was also described by Aristotle as a mythologos, or "tale-teller." In this stylish and insightful book, intended for both general readers and students, James Romm argues that the author of the Histories was both a historian-in the original sense of "one who inquires"-and a master storyteller. Although most ancient historians wrote only about events they themselves had lived through, Herodotus explored an era well before his own time-from the rise of the Persian Empire to the Persian invasions of Greece in 490 and 480 B.C., the heroic fight of the Greeks against the invaders, and the final Greek victory. Working without the aid of written sources, Herodotus traveled widely and wove into his chronology descriptions of people and countries he visited and anecdotes that shed light on their lives and customs. Romm discusses the historical background of Herodotus`s life and work, his moralistic approach to history, his insatiable fascination with people and places, his literary powers, and the question of the historical "truth" behind the stories he relates. He gives general readers a fresh appreciation of the Histories as a work encompassing fiction and nonfiction, myth and history, and poetry and prose. Herodotus becomes not simply a source of historical data but a masterful and artistic author who created a radically new literary genre. Hermes Books John Herington, Founding Editor

What good is history to cultural studies? Meaghan Morris looks at struggles over "history" in social settings created by capitalism: in tourist landscapes and in television time. The materials of her analysis are motels, shopping malls, beaches, and local politics. She focuses on history and cultural heritage as issues of controversy for white working-class and poor suburban communities, as well as for urban cultural elites.

Natural Symbols is one of the most important works of modern anthropology. First published over thirty years ago, the work presaged many of the most controversial areas of intellectual debate, from the social significance of the body to religious cosmology.
Written against the backdrop of the student uprisings of the late 1960s, the book took seriously the revolutionary fervour of the times, but instead of seeking to destroy the rituals and symbols that can govern and oppress, Mary Douglas saw instead that if transformation were needed, it could only be made possible through better understanding. Expressed with clarity and dynamism, the passionate analysis which follows remains one of the most insightful and rewarding studies of human behaviour ever written.

World history is currently one of the most exciting areas of discussion amongst historians. In this book some of the most distinguished scholars and public intellectuals in the field present magisterial overviews and innovative approaches to the key problems of world history. Others offer radical postmodern and postcolonial critiques of holism, identity, and Western "scientific" history in favor of a different kind of universalism. The collection thus presents both the development of the field and current lively debates within it, challenging readers to rethink their notions about the direction, meanings, and uses of world history.

The book is intended to stimulate lively discussion among both teachers and students and to suggest new ways to conceptualize and organize their study of world history. It will be welcomed by all those interested in teaching history courses attuned to the global era in which we live.

Since the 1980s historians have been influenced by two anthropological concepts: cultural distance and awareness of small-scale interactions. Recent work, however, has shifted away from these notions. We now see that cultures cannot be studied as units with internal coherence and that the microcosm does not represent a cultural whole.

This book proposes an alternative. Differentiation is the keyword that lets us focus on ruptures, contradiction, and change within a society. It drives us to recognize many different histories as opposed to one official history. The case studies in "Between History and Histories" use this new approach in historical anthropology to examine how certain events are silenced in the shadow of others that are commemorated by monuments, ceremonies, documents, and story-telling. The first set of studies explores cases around the world where the official construction of the past has been contested. The second set describes the silences voiced as a result of these disputes.

For students, this collection provides a useful overview of interaction between two disciplines. For historians and anthropologists, it offers a new vision of how history is produced.

What are the ethical responsibilities of the historian in an age of mass murder and hyper-reality? Can one be postmodern and still write history? For whom should history be written? The author explores these questions through the figure of the "heterological historian". Realizing the philosophical impossibilities of ever recovering "what really happened", this historian nevertheless acknowledges a moral imperative to speak for those who have been rendered voiceless. The book also weighs the impact of modern archival methods, such as photographs, film and the Internet, which bring with them new constraints on the writing of history and which mandate a different vision of community. Drawing on the works of continental philosophers, historiographers, cognitive scientists and filmmakers, the book creates a framework for the understanding of history and the ethical duties of the historian.

In this collection of essays, Peter Burke explores the theory and practice of what is called new cultural history. He focuses on the varieties of cultural history which have emerged since the writings of Jacob Burckhardt and John Huizinga. No new orthodoxy has emerged to replace the classic model, Burke suggests, despite the importance of innovative approaches inspired by social and cultural anthropology.

Intended as both a historical essay and a self-conscious meditation on the writing of history, this volume takes as its starting point a series of accounts of Rome's origins offered over the course of centuries. Alexandre Grandazzi places these accounts in their contemporary contexts and shows how the growing sophistication in methodology gradually changed the accepted views of the city's origins. He explores, for example, the hypercritical philology of the 19th century which cast aside everything that could not be verified. He then explains how the increase in archaeological discoveries and changing archaeological techniques influenced the story of Rome's birth.