The Presence of the Past
by Roy Rosenzweig, David Thelen
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Book Summary Information
Author: David Thelen, Roy RosenzweigEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-04-15
ISBN: 0231111495
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Book Reviews of The Presence of the Past
Book Review: The Past May not be as Much of a Foreign Country as some Believe
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
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