Who Owns History?

Publishers Weekly

In this series of addresses and essays, many in print for the first time, one of America's preeminent historians does his profession proud. After discussing his own life history beginning with a New York leftist Jewish childhood, during which his family "discuss[ed] the intricacies of international relations and domestic politics over the dinner table" Foner (The Story of American Freedom), a professor at Columbia University, writes with erudition and clarity on a variety of historical subjects. At his best, he critically assesses the way American history and historians intersect. In an address he gave last year as president of the American Historical Association, he exhorted his colleagues to examine American history in an international context: "In a global age, the forever-unfinished story of American freedom must become a conversation with the entire world." His critique of Ken Burns's Civil War documentary shows how the much-acclaimed series by depicting the war as a fight between Northern and Southern whites and by essentially excluding the Reconstruction, one of Foner's own specialties exhibits some of the same failings that have plagued historians of the era (which Foner calls "the most controversial and misunderstood era in our nation's history"). Other strong essays include a lecture on blacks and the U.S. Constitution and an analysis of the way historians have looked at socialism in the United States. The essays on history in South Africa and Russia, while thought-provoking, feel a bit dated (they were written in the mid-1990s). But as whole, these writings help to debunk the idea that history is irrelevant in the 21st century. (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

David M. Kennedy

"Eric Foner is rightly ranked among our era's most distinguished historians. In Who Owns History?, he takes on some of the most contentious issues in the American past, while candidly describing his own intellectual journeys, and often brilliantly illuminating the nature of the historian's craft."
—David M. Kennedy, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford University

Joyce Appleby

"Who Owns History? introduces readers to one of the country's finest historians, Eric Foner, writing about issues more critical to American public life today than ever before."
—Joyce Appleby, UCLA

Michael Kammen

"Who Owns History? offers engaging essays that address significant issues in lucid prose accessible to the general reader as well as students and scholars. Above all, the book carries and conveys what I call 'moral weight,' which is one of Eric Foner's notable gifts as a historian."
—Michael Kammen, Cornell University

Library Journal

Each individual has a vested interest in knowing the past because the past is in everyone. However, "everyone and no one" owns the past and "the study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery," states Foner (history, Columbia Univ.), author of Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution and other respected titles on American history. In nine readable essays written between 1983 and 2001 and grouped in three sections "The Politics of History and Historians," "Rethinking History in a Changing World," and "The Enduring Civil War" Foner argues that the historian has a relationship with his or her own world. His style is personable and straightforward, and he effectively presses home his assumptions. From a historian's perspective, though, he adds nothing new; the question "Who owns history?" has been around in various guises for 30 years, and Foner's variation simply restates the theme that academics must be community-oriented if only to stay in touch with the public. Perhaps a more pertinent question would be, "Who determines which history is `anointed' as the `true' history?" Nevertheless, Foner is a respected historian, and he ably articulates a viewpoint shared by many of his colleagues. Recommended for academic and large public libraries. Charles L. Lumpkins, Pennsylvania State Univ., State College Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

A series of nine previously published essays by historian Foner (Columbia U.) in which he reflects on his own career as a historian as well as on broader issues of how history is used and understood. Among the topics discussed are the cultural and historical determinants of what a historian chooses to study, the evolution of the idea of freedom as it relates to the U.S. and globalization, the treatment of the past in post-apartheid South Africa, the relative weakness of socialist movements in the United States, and Ken Burn's treatment of the Civil War. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Kirkus Reviews

Short essays by noted scholar Foner (The Story of American Freedom, 1998, etc.) on the role history has played in recent times, including his own. The intellectual currents of Foner's life serve as the basis for this collection. He discusses how he came to write his own version of American history; the role his mentor, Columbia professor Richard Hofstadter, played in his development as a scholar; and how his experiences working as a historian in the former Soviet Union shaped his recent thoughts on his discipline. Foner (History/Columbia Univ.) displays an amazing breadth of knowledge, but the real joy here is his accessibility. Anyone can read these pieces, written in clear, generous prose. The author seems aware that his interests and struggles are relatively narrow and that readers won't share them unless he writes without jargon or cant. As a result, even non-eggheads will care about Hofstadter's academic travails as presented by his affectionate former student. Left-leaning Foner devotes plenty of time to socialism, another potentially dreary subject here made engaging. His essay "Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?" may be the single best attempt to answer that question. In fact, like any good teacher, he winds up creating new questions instead of answering the old, ultimately rephrasing his query as "Does Socialism have a future in Europe?" Foner has teeth, too. He delivers a broadside to Ken Burns's television documentary The Civil War, contending that the director commits the most fatal error for a wannabe historian: instead of allowing the facts to build an argument, Foner writes, Burns's analysis "bears more resemblance to turn-of-century romantic nationalism thanto modern understandings of the war's complex and ambiguous consequences." A lucid antidote to the sensationalist histories currently in vogue.