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Past Imperfect

其他書名	Facts, Fictions, and Fraud--American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin
出版	PublicAffairs, 2004
ISBN	15864824409781586482442
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=f0VuS0F2kLwC&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋The past has never been more contentious, its interpreters never more publicly at war. Now a renowned historian provides an evocative examination of his profession, American-style. Woodrow Wilson, a practicing academic historian before he took to politics, defined the importance of history: "A nation which does not know what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today." He, like many men of his generation, wanted to impose a version of America's founding identity: it was a land of the free and a home of the brave. But not the braves. Or the slaves. Or the disenfranchised women. So the history of Wilson's generation omitted a significant proportion of the population in favor of a perspective that was predominantly white, male and Protestant. That flaw would become a fissure and eventually a schism. A new history arose which, written in part by radicals and liberals, had little use for the noble and the heroic, and that rankled many who wanted a celebratory rather than a critical history. To this combustible mixture of elements was added the flame of public debate. History in the 1990s was a minefield of competing passions, political views, and prejudices.