4 results for "Inventions"

Myth America: historians take on the biggest legends and lies about our past

Kevin Michael Kruse,Julian E. Zelizer
"The United States is in the grip of a crisis of bad history. Inaccurate interpretations and outright misrepresentations of the past-cultivated within and promoted by the conservative movement and right-wing media over the last several decades-hold sway among large numbers of Americans, damaging our public discourse. In Myth America, historians Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer have assembled an all-star team of historians to provide textured analysis that explains what we get wrong about the past. Drawing on their immense knowledge of scholarship and their own primary research, these contributors provide correctives to the ways conservatives distort history to serve the needs of their anti-democratic agenda. For instance: Erika Lee shows how, far from posing a relentless threat to America, immigrants have long been recruited and even coerced to come to the United States. Joshua Zeitz traces how the welfare programs of the Great Society, criticized by the right as wasteful failures, have provided millions of Americans with food security, health care, and education. Carol Anderson uncovers how racism and anxiety over the nation's changing demographics, not voter fraud, are motivating Republicans' assault on voting rights. Elizabeth Hinton reveals that, rather than curbing crime, patrolling low-income communities with outside police forces has historically intensified violence and made everyone less safe. Taken together, the essays unveil how corporate interests and right-wing politicians use bad history to fan the flames of white resentment and unravel America's social safety net. Replacing myths with research and reality, Myth America is essential reading amid today's heated debates about our nation's past"--
Basic Books 2022 390 pages

From the Exodus to King Akhnaton

Velikovsky, Immanuel
This is the first volume of the series Ages in Chaos, in which Immanuel Velikovsky undertakes a reconstruction of the history of antiquity. With utmost precision and the exciting style of a presentation that's typical for him he shows, beyond doubt, what nobody would consider possible: in the conventional history of Egypt - and therefore also of many neighboring cultures - a span of 600 years is described, which has never happened! This assertion is as unbelievable and outrageous as the assertions in Worlds in Collision or Earth in Upheaval. But Velikovsky takes us on a detailed and highly interesting journey through the - corrected - history and makes us a witness to how many question marks disappear, doubts vanish and corresponding facts from the entire Near East furnish a picture of overall conformity and correctness. You will meet an Egyptian eyewitness of the biblical plagues and the mysterious Queen of Sheba. You will find out to where her legendary visit led her. You will, moreover, learn surprising details about the temple of Solomon and learn who was behind its sacking. In the end you do not only wonder how conventional historiography has come into existence, but why it is still taught and published. Just as Velikovsky became the father of "neo-catastrophism" by Worlds in Collision, he became the father of "new chronology" by Ages in Chaos.
Paradigma 2009 364 pages

The myths we live by

Raphael Samuel,Paul Thompson
First published in 1990, The Myths We Live By explores how memory and tradition are continually reshaped and recycled to make sense of the past from the standpoint of the present. The book makes use of the rich material of recorded life stories, with examples stretching from the transient myths of contemporary Italian school children on strike, back to the family legends of classical Greece, and the traditional storytelling of Canadian Indians. The range of examples is international and together they advocate a transformed history, which actively relates subjective and objective, past and present, politics and poetry, and highlights history as a living force in the present. The Myths We Live By will appeal to anyone interested in oral history, memory, and myth.
Routledge 2023-05-27 274 pages