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Channeling the Past: Politicizing History in Postwar America: Studies in American Thought and Culture

Autor Erik Christiansen
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 14 mar 2013
After the turmoil of the Great Depression and World War II, Americans looked to the nation’s more distant past for lessons to inform its uncertain future. By applying recent and emerging techniques in mass communication—including radio and television programs and commercial book clubs—American elites working in media, commerce, and government used history to confer authority on their respective messages.
    With insight and wit, Erik Christiansen uncovers in Channeling the Past the ways that powerful corporations rewrote history to strengthen the postwar corporate state, while progressives, communists, and other leftists vied to make their own versions of the past more popular. Christiansen looks closely at several notable initiatives—CBS’s flashback You Are There program; the Smithsonian Museum of American History, constructed in the late 1950s; the Cavalcade of America program sponsored by the Du Pont Company; the History Book Club; and the Freedom Train, a museum on rails that traveled the country from 1947 to 1949 exhibiting historic documents and flags, including original copies of the U.S. Constitution and the Magna Carta.
    It is often said that history is written by the victors, but Christiansen offers a more nuanced perspective: history is constantly remade to suit the objectives of those with the resources to do it. He provides dramatic evidence of sophisticated calculations that influenced both public opinion and historical memory, and shows that Americans’ relationships with the past changed as a result.
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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780299289041
ISBN-10: 0299289044
Pagini: 318
Ilustrații: 7 b-w illus.
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 25 mm
Greutate: 0.41 kg
Ediția:1
Editura: University of Wisconsin Press
Colecția University of Wisconsin Press
Seria Studies in American Thought and Culture

Locul publicării:United States

Recenzii

“Christiansen’s examination of the making of popular history in postwar America adds greatly to contemporary debates over how Americans do and do not use their history in public. It harkens back to a time before cable television and the Internet, when ‘mass media’ was more of a common experience. In particular, his investigation of how Du Pont and BBDO used audience research to shape the public history they presented on their radio and television programs is a real eye-opener that readers won’t forget.”—David Glassberg, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

“Postwar America was a surprisingly creative time for making U.S. history come alive and for disseminating the ‘lessons’ of that history to broad and diverse American publics. Erik Christiansen explains why this was so and, through meticulous research, reconstructs the rise and fall of five key public history initiatives. A probing, illuminating, and elegantly written work.”—Gary Gerstle, Vanderbilt University

“This is an insightful analysis of the uses and misuses of history in an age of high anxiety and political polarization. It’s a timely and intellectually nuanced work that will appeal to both scholars and serious general readers with an interest in Cold War intellectualism.”—Library Journal

“Christiansen has written an informative, well-researched, useful book that casts considerable light on how mid-century Americans encountered history outside the classroom.”—HNN: History News Network

“This very accessible, fast-moving read examines revisionist movements from the Great Depression through the early stages of the Cold War.”—Choice

Channeling the Past may focus mainly on corporations rewriting history to influence public opinion, but it also delves into attempts by various groups on the political left to bolster their message by invoking the past.”—Minnesota History Magazine

Notă biografică

Erik Christiansen is assistant professor of history and public history coordinator at Rhode Island College.

Cuprins

List of Illustrations
Preface
 
Introduction: History's Past Presence
1 The History Book Club Offers the Past as an "Image of Ourselves"
2 Mythologizing History on Du Pont's Cavalcade of America
3 History, News, and You Are There
4 The Freedom Train's Narrow Gauge Iconography
5 Building a "National Shrine" at the National Museum of American History
Conclusion: Once and Future Truths
 
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Descriere

After the turmoil of the Great Depression and World War II, Americans looked to the nation’s more distant past for lessons to inform its uncertain future. By applying recent and emerging techniques in mass communication—including radio and television programs and commercial book clubs—American elites working in media, commerce, and government used history to confer authority on their respective messages.
    With insight and wit, Erik Christiansen uncovers in Channeling the Past the ways that powerful corporations rewrote history to strengthen the postwar corporate state, while progressives, communists, and other leftists vied to make their own versions of the past more popular. Christiansen looks closely at several notable initiatives—CBS’s flashback You Are There program; the Smithsonian Museum of American History, constructed in the late 1950s; the Cavalcade of America program sponsored by the Du Pont Company; the History Book Club; and the Freedom Train, a museum on rails that traveled the country from 1947 to 1949 exhibiting historic documents and flags, including original copies of the U.S. Constitution and the Magna Carta.
    It is often said that history is written by the victors, but Christiansen offers a more nuanced perspective: history is constantly remade to suit the objectives of those with the resources to do it. He provides dramatic evidence of sophisticated calculations that influenced both public opinion and historical memory, and shows that Americans’ relationships with the past changed as a result.