The Past Is a Foreign Country

Posted on 15 April 2018 by David Lowenthal

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. Download The Past Is a Foreign Country by David Lowenthal – kino-fada.fr This book is both physically and symbolically massive Lowenthal sets out to chronicle attitudes toward the past in the broadest possible terms from antiquity to present albeit, his present is the 1980s He paints his conclusions in pretty broad strokes, but does not insist that his generalizations be taken as truth Rather, he aims to explore three primary themes 1 how the past enriches or impoverishes us, and why we choose to embrace or shun it, 2 how our recollections and surroundi This book is both physically and symbolically massive Lowenthal sets out to chronicle attitudes toward the past in the broadest possible terms fro...Review from 2009 I m a grad student reading this for a class on heritage tourism I ve enjoyed the flow of his sentences and the interesting images, but I agree with Kenneth an earlier reviewer when a hundred page chapter can be summarized in one page, I ve tended to skim quite a bit.In our class we ve read ch...An amazing interdisciplinary look at our relationship with the past Nostalgia, progress, and anachronism all play a part in the lengthy multimedia show It is exhaustively detailed the kind of book you d be grateful for on a desert island It would make a good 6 disc Ken Burns style document...I read this in grad school for a historic preservation class Many of my classmates complained bitterly about reading Lowenthal, but I was intrigued by the depth of his knowledge It warmed the cockles of my geekish heart to read so many references to classic...Full disclosure here I skimmed the hell out of this book because I checked it out of the Smith college library in, like, June, and then forgot about it for months of summertime, until I finally checked my UMass email and realized it was way overdue I kinda wish I had it on my shelf now I should have bought it when Lowenthal came to UMass to talk last year It isn t all that focused, but in essence it is a really long, interesting discussion of how people think about the past, study the past, Full disclosure here I skimmed the hell out of this book because I checked it out of the Smith college library in, like, June, and then forgot about it for months of summertime, until I finally checked my UMass email and realized it was way overdue I kinda wish I had i...I skimmed this book, and may want to return to it Lowenthal s approach is so multidisciplinary that it is often scattershot, but his attempt at a unifying historiography is valuable I ve been thinking recently about the nineteenth century creati...3.5 probably Lowenthal looks at the different ways we relate to the past idealizing a golden age, imagining a barbaric past we ve risen above, using the past as models for our own lives and the various ways we learn about the past, such as memory, written history, film and artifact...This was the first required book I read for the very first course I took in grad school, 21 years ago At this point the only thing I remember about it is that the author quotes a line from the Dennis the Menace comic stripVery informative and a great taxonomic approach to the effects and uses of the past and memory, but kinda dry and I couldn t get into it much.Interesting, thouhgfor the plentiful examples than the arguments

English
15 April 2018

David Lowenthal