In the Past Lane: Historical Perspectives on American Culture / Edition 1

by Michael Kammen

Overview

Michael Kammen is widely regarded as one of our most important—and most diversely talented—cultural historians. David Brion Davis has said, "No other historian of [his] generation has such a broad and concrete grasp of 'American culture' in all its manifestations, from constitutional law to formal painting and popular culture." This engaging volume stands as rich and compelling evidence of that assertion. In the Past Lane collects writings from a span of more than ten years, covering the broad spectrum of Kammen's recent interests. Essay topics include the role of the historian, the relationship between culture and the State, uses of tradition in American commercial culture, American historical art, memory distortion in American history, the contested uses of history in American education, and others. The book will be seen as an important contribution to Kammen's wide-ranging scholarship—and to American cultural history proper.

"For professional historians or serious students of history, Kammen's essays provide an excellent opportunity to gauge how those who chronicle our past both influence and are influenced by national and personal experiences."—Booklist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195130911
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/25/1999
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	9.21(w) x 6.15(h) x 0.79(d)
Lexile:	1590L (what's this?)

About the Author

Michael Kammen is the Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture at Cornell University. He won the Pulitzer Prize for People of Paradox (1973) and the Francis Parkman Prize for A Machine That Would Go of Itself (1987). Kammen is also the author of The Lively Arts (Oxford, 1996).

Table of Contents

I. The Personal and the Professional1. Personal Identity and the Historian's VocationII. Perceptions of Culture and Public Life2. Culture and the State of America3. Temples of Justice: The Iconography of Judgement and American Culture4. "Our Idealism is Practical": Emerging Uses of Tradition in American Commercial Culture, 1889-19365. The Enduring Challenges and Changing Role of Cultural InstitutionsIII. Changing Perceptions of the Past6. Myth, Memory, and Amnesia in American Historical Art7. The Problem of American Exceptionalism: A Reconsideration8. Some Patterns and Meanings of Memory Distortion in American History9. History Is Our Heritage: The Past in Contemporary American Culture

Editorial Reviews

"In this book, Professor Kammen addresses three specific current concerns among American historians: the nature and dynamics of collective memory in national life, the contested role of cultural programs in the civic order, and the complex linking between the personal and the professional in the writing of history. More deeply, it is a book about art—about representations of reality by artists in the form of words and in the form of objects. Michael Kammen is passionate about art in both of these forms. He appreciates the primal fact that America is most usefully seen as one culture among the myriad cultures of the earth. His work as a scholar is powered by a passion for context: cultural context, the context of personal experience, all past time, and global geography. Widely aware, carefully thought-out, superbly written, In The Past Lane offers us here insights and understandings that are uniquely valuable."—Joel Williamson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

"Michael Kammen is a genial observer and friendly critic of his own profession, with a unique capacity to encompass every phase of the history business in his thinking. He brings to our attention not just historians but architects, government agencies, museums, commercial entrepreneurs in the 'heritage' trade, and the ways ordinary people are their own historians, remembering, restoring, and distorting the past."—Michael Schudson, Professor of Communication, University of California, San Diego

"These essays are both penetrating and original. I was partiuclarly struck by the originality of the first essay on personal identity and historians, and by the penetrating insights to be found in his reevaluation of American exceptionalism. Yet, for all Kammen's appreciation of the American past, he never confuses heritage and history. These essays offer, once again, a fine example of Kammen's persistent effort to connect a needed past to an empty present."—Carl Degler, Professor of History, Stanford University

"In his splendid scholarly career Michael Kammen has distinguished himself time after time, as teacher, historian, writer, master observer of culture and human nature. In print, as in person, he is ever wise, lively, provocative, clear-thinking, and fair-minded. And witty. Now in this spirited new look at history and its practitioners he shines again. It is a delightful book."—David McCullough, author of Truman

"To the insistent question how is history relevant, Michael Kammen offers compelling answers. In this absolutely fascinating book he brilliantly demonstrates how historians reconstruct the past out of the urgencies of the present."—William E. Leuchtenburg, Department of History, University of North Carolina

"A perceptive look at the practice of history, by one of its leading practitioners."—Kirkus Reviews

"[T]he insights here will help any reader be a more responsible and productive user of our American history and culture."—Publisher's Weekly

"For professional historians or serious students of history, Kammen's essays provide an excellent opportunity to gauge how those who chronicle our past both influence and are influenced by national and personal experiences."—Booklist

"[Kammen's] view of the historical role of government and business—and of that oft-maligned word, heritage—is refreshingly positive and optimistic."—David Walton, The New York Times Book Review

"The essay [on American Exceptionalism], combined with the book's opening one, makes as good an introduction to what being a historian in America has been, and now is, about as the general reader is likely to find."—Colin Waters, The Washington Times

From the Publisher

In a scattershot group of insightful essays, Pulitzer Prizewinner Kammen (History/Cornell; The Lively Arts, 1996, etc.) offers varied perspectives not so much on American history as on its uses and effects.

Kammen's outlooks range from the personal to the broadly cultural. In a long essay, he challenges the notion of historical objectivity, demonstrating the manner in which personal issues often drive historians in choice and treatment of subject matter. He also sympathetically examines the approaches of academic and nonacademic historians to their craft, exploring problems ranging from relationships with students to coping with professional criticism. Kammen divides his remaining essays into two thematic groups: those exploring perceptions of culture and public life, and those examining changing perceptions of the past. In the first, he discusses such diverse issues as the history of government support for cultural programs, the development of courthouse architecture and its meaning for our evolving views of justice and the legal profession, and the exploitation of historical and cultural images in advertising. In the second, Kammen emphasizes our self-conscious reshaping of the past in historical art (often laden with cultural values) the problem of American exceptionalism, and the "practice" of historical amnesia by political leaders in order to create cohesive national myths. Finally, Kammen explores the workings of our notion of "heritage"—"those aspects of history we cherish and affirm"—in the operation of selective historical memory. While a sense of heritage can lead to false history, the author calls heritage in its best sense "an enticement . . . that could conceivably bring us to history as enchantment, as mental exercise, and as a source of self-knowledge that points toward enlightenment if not wisdom."

A perceptive look at the practice of history, by one of its leading practitioners.

Kirkus Reviews