Product Description

Some people make photo albums, collect antiques, or visit historic battlefields. Others keep diaries, plan annual family gatherings, or stitch together patchwork quilts in a tradition learned from grandparents. Each of us has ways of communing with the past, and our reasons for doing so are as varied as our memories. In a sweeping survey, Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen asked 1,500 Americans about their connection to the past and how it influences their daily lives and hopes for the future. The result is a surprisingly candid series of conversations and reflections on how the past infuses the present with meaning. Rosenzweig and Thelen found that people assemble their experiences into narratives that allow them to make sense of their personal histories, set priorities, project what might happen next, and try to shape the future. By using these narratives to mark change and create continuity, people chart the courses of their lives. A young woman from Ohio speaks of giving birth to her first child, which caused her to reflect upon her parents and the ways that their example would help her to become a good mother. An African American man from Georgia tells how he and his wife were drawn to each other by their shared experiences and lessons learned from growing up in the South in the 1950s. Others reveal how they personalize historical events, as in the case of a Massachusetts woman who traces much of her guarded attitude toward life to witnessing the assassination of John F. Kennedy on television when she was a child. While the past is omnipresent to Americans, "history" as it is usually defined in textbooks leaves many people cold. Rosenzweig and Thelen found that history as taught in school does not inspire a strong connection to the past. And they reveal how race and ethnicity affects how Americans perceive the past: while most white Americans tend to think of it as something personal, African Americans and American Indians are more likely to think in terms of broadly shared experiences--like slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and the violation of Indian treaties." Rosenzweig and Thelen´s conclusions about the ways people use their personal, family, and national stories have profound implications for anyone involved in researching or presenting history, as well as for all those who struggle to engage with the past in a meaningful way.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #120331 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-15
• Released on: 2000-04-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.com Review
While the historical profession and its critics have pointed to a vast ignorance among the American people about the past, historians Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen argue that it's the commentators who have much to learn. Conducting a phone survey of 1,453 Americans from a variety of backgrounds, the authors soon discovered that their professional training had left them unprepared for how people actually thought about the past. A surprising number of Americans feel unconnected to the nation-centered version of history taught in classrooms, searching instead for an intimate encounter with the past through family histories, the collection of memorabilia, and museum excursions. But these examples of "popular historymaking" are more than just anachronistic remembrances, and Rosenzweig and Thelen recount the ways that Americans use their historical imaginations to live in the present and shape the future.

A profound reconsideration of what counts as historical thinking, The Presence of the Past exposes some misconceptions at the heart of the so-called history wars. Historical professionals like Gary Nash, Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross Dunn who argue (in History on Trial) that academic standards must reflect the rich ethnic mixture of the nation miss the fact that most students are alienated from the classrooms that have made them regurgitate volumes of facts. Cultural conservatives like Lynne Cheney and William Bennett, who insist on a triumphant version of the national past, fail to recognize that most Americans do not see their lives as connected to purported heroes like George Washington. A wonderful and refreshing book, The Presence of the Past points toward a democratization of historical consciousness by tenderly exploring how ordinary people remember. --James Highfill

From Booklist
It is customary for professional historians as well as some members of our "chatting classes" to dismiss ordinary Americans as historical illiterates. Not so, according to Rosenzweig and Thelen, both professors of history. After surveying 1,500 Americans regarding their attitudes toward the past, they offer some surprising conclusions. Of course, in a narrow sense, many Americans are deficient in their knowledge of history; that is, for example, they are unable to describe the causes of the War of 1812. But in a broader sense, the authors conclude that most Americans have a strong awareness of their historical heritage. Furthermore, they tend to integrate that heritage into their personal lives rather than viewing it as a distant, sterile, and irrelevant series of facts. In what is regarded as a race-obsessed culture, it is striking that many of the respondents to the survey seem to shy away from "identity politics," preferring to interpret the past in terms of their individual experiences. Jay Freeman

Review
A fascinating study. -- Library Journal

The quotes from actual survey interviews set to rest the myth that Americans are not interested in history. Instead, the Americans they surveyed challenge educators, museums, authors, and filmmakers to present history in authentic and experiential ways that engage them as active participants. -- Review

Customer Reviews

The Past May not be as Much of a Foreign Country as some Believe
Throughout the 1990s historians Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen undertook a major survey of attitudes about and understanding of history in the United States. Their findings are startling. We all have long seen the periodic stories about the inability of students to place the American Revolution in the correct century and to name the the first president of the United States. Then we typically bemoan the future and the kids that will lead us into it only to return to our football games on television without doing much of anything more.

In "The Presence of the Past," however, the authors take a different approach to looking at the hold history has over us. In this important book they note that much of the consciousness of the past is more about collective memory of close and local events than about the overarching national master narrative. Collective memory is a powerful force for any person and group. Through linkages with such memory we identify and define and connect ourselves. Rosenzweig and Thelen see an intensely personal relationship with history among Americans. They note that far from Americans being disengaged from history, as has been routinely thought because of their detachment from national themes, most people have supplanted interest in these broader themes to the history of family and locale. Indeed, Rosenzweig and Thelen insist that Americans "pursue the past actively and make it part of everyday life" (p. 18). Tellingly, they find that no more than 24 percent of their sample answered that the history of the United States was the past they felt was "most important" to them, as opposed to the 50-60 percent who identified a more intimate past as central to their lives. The authors include considerable evidence to support these assertions, breaking down survey answers by ethnicity, education, and other indicators. While Thelen laments this development, Rosenweig is more optimistic about its implications for the cause of history in the twenty-first century.

Their findings are borne out by my own experience as a curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and I see this concern for local and personal history expressed by visitors routinely at the museum. The National Air and Space Museum is the most visited museum in the world, and it certainly seems that an important part of its attraction is the result of the immediacy of the subject that it interprets. Repeatedly, visitors come looking for an artifact to which they, or a member of their family or a friend, had a personal connection. Steve Lubar, who curated the "America on the Move" exhibit at the National Museum of American History in Washington made the same point by observing that for all of the exhibit's otherwise spectacular features, the majority of visitors only really pondered its later parts where their personal memory allowed them to connect to the artifacts and story in a deeply personal and idiosyncratic manner. He noted that of the 15 sections of this exhibit, most people breezed through the first 12, and mostly stopped for extended periods in sections more recent in time and with artifacts, such as the Chicago elevated rail car or a used car showroom from 1949 or a traffic jam with numerous recent vintage and quite cherry automobiles to which they had a relationship. Dik Daso, a curator working on "The Price of Freedom" exhibit also at the National Museum of American History, similarly remarked on the popularity of the Vietnam War section of the exhibit as veterans attending the exhibit's opening ignored most of the artifacts and gathered around a large map of Vietnam and shared their experiences with one another. Their stories, furthermore, were highly personal; interlinking spheres of memory to find common ground in an unlikely setting. Like politics, to paraphrase Tip O'Neill, all history is local. That may be the fundamental message of "The Presence of the Past."

This begs the question, how do teachers of history relate larger themes in the American past to the intimate interests of those who must understand and hopefully use it? This is critical to the education of the next generation of Americans, but it is also important for the lifelong non-classroom learning that every individual is involved in. What might museums, historic sites, television documentaries, written histories, and related efforts do to help focus interest and enhance the diffusion of greater understanding? At least some of the answers revolve around the closer linkage of national and world history with personal and local concerns. How to accomplish this most expeditiously, of course, presents a challenge not without difficulties. But it is noble task, and I applaud those who undertake it.

The findings in this book help us to understand the complexity of the issue. Read and ponder, discuss and act.

Defining Down History
There is much to learn from Presence of the Past but notnecessarily what the authors have in mind. Rosenzweig and Thelenpurport to give us good news about the historical consciousness of the American people, finding that most Americans are, in some way, "connected to the past." They do this by defining down the definition of history to mean things like talking with relatives, keeping a diary, collecting antique motorcycles, and even attending Bible classes. History teachers become the heavies because they insist that students regurgitate historical facts about which average Americans express a profound lack of interest (although paradoxically they also say that they would like their children to have the same experience).

It's as if those who bemoaned the mathematical illiteracy of the American public were suddenly challenged by a survey noting that virtually all Americans could read house numbers, tell the time, and make change while using a calculator. These hypothetical respondents would probably also criticize their teachers for burdening them with irrelevant information.

Because the majority of the Americans surveyed for Presence of the Past have little sense of history outside their family or group, their knowledge of broader history is both sketchy and distorted. Rosenzweig and Thelen celebrate the fact that Americans put more trust in museums than in books for their knowledge of history, but such a faith only demonstrates naivete about museums. (In the wake of the Enola Gay fiasco at the Smithsonian and a subsequent symposium of articles in the Journal of American History, one JAH reader noted that the "true tragedy" was that "both sides believed that the people who saw the exhibit would be swayed, unquestioningly, by the 'facts' presented to them and that the visitors would not stop, even briefly, to think of possible biases in the exhibition itself, let alone about WWII-i.e. that they would think critically. Unfortunately, because of the state of education in this country, I agree with them.")

Using such a low common denominator to define history also reveals that those with the most congruent view of the past are "evangelicals" (defined by Rosenzweig and Thelen as Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses as well as Protestant fundamentalists and evangelicals). Thelen notes that the appeal of evangelical religion is so powerful "that it seems the most likely common ground on which some respondents from different cultures can recognize each other." "What," asks Rosenzweig, "does a largely secular group like historians have to say to them?"

The authors' greatest fear is that the "privatized and parochial past" of their informants will not support history as "a vehicle for social justice" or inspire people "to work for social change in the present." Not to worry. Ignorance, parochialism, and naivete are a fertile soil for those who wish to use "history" as a tool to promote social and political agendas. "Black Athena" and its kin are only a recent example.

Awareness of one's own past is helpful (we often call it maturity), and extending understanding of the past to the lives of one's relatives is even better. But without an appreciation of the broader past, democracy is in danger. Much of what passes for present truth is, in the words of C. S. Lewis, "merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age."ÿ

Their research raises more questions than answers.
In recent years it has been popular to lambaste the American as unlettered in history; gullible and vulnerable to the whims of the popular media. Rosenzwieg and Thelen take issue with this assertion through the results of their survey of popular American attitudes and perceptions toward history. In deference to the positive, they crafted their survey to discover what Americans do know about their past, and which aspects therein possess special meaning to the individual. Through their findings they hoped to locate a common ground that would engage both scholar and layman in the search for understanding in history.

Rosenzweig and Thelen found that many Americans regard the past as a well-spring for moral guidance and personal identity. In contrast to the professional historian, it is less the specific event (e.g. World War II) than the familial tie (e.g. grandpa going off to war) that determines relevance and interpretation for the layman. For many Americans history is alive and ever-present: through keepsakes, family lore, and observations. It is subject to an unending reinterpretation and definition, and, most importantly, it is what defines aspiration and identity.

Rosenzweig and Thelen also found little to suggest homogeneity among Americans in historical interpretation. In areas such as ethnicity and religion the variance was profound. Their findings suggested that such identifications influence meaning and interpretation, and speak of divisions within American society. This was particularly true in comparisons between the reminisces of European Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans. In some areas of history (e.g. slavery and the westward movement), there appeared little ground for a broad and unifying consensus.

Is there a paradigm that would unite scholar and layman? Rosenzweig and Thelen suggest it may exist in popular history, a form of historical presentation steeped in relevance to the individual. This 'democratization' of history would spring forth from a productive dialogue between the layman and the scholar. In the view of Rosenzweig and Thelen, the professional historian is wont to wallow in esoterica and narrow specialization. While impressive, such research does not engage the layman; instead, it perpetuates the popular perception of history as a dry compendium of dates and facts. Rather a productive dialogue could draw both layman and scholar in a common pursuit.

Does this mean that history is alive and well in the United States? Unfortunately, the optimism effused from Rosenzweig and Thelen's study provides little room for comfort. Despite their stated intention to survey a cross section of Americans, the design of their survey provides evidence they fell short of this goal. Asian Ameicans were under-represented, as were people living in multi-ethnic neighborhoods. Also, socio-economic status did not receive the attention it merited; previous studies have found correlation between socio-economic status and knowledge in many fields, including history. Yet, Rosenzweig and Thelen have provided both scholars and laymen with food for thought as to what direction history should be taken.