The Ever-Changing Past

The Ever-Changing Past PDF Author: James M. Banner, Jr.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300258240
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
An experienced, multi-faceted historian shows how revisionist history is at the heart of creating historical knowledge "A rallying cry in favor of historians who, revisiting past subjects, change their minds. . . . Rewarding reading."—Kirkus Reviews History is not, and has never been, inert, certain, merely factual, and beyond reinterpretation. Taking readers from Thucydides to the origin of the French Revolution to the Civil War and beyond, James M. Banner, Jr. explores what historians do and why they do it. Banner shows why historical knowledge is unlikely ever to be unchanging, why history as a branch of knowledge is always a search for meaning and a constant source of argument, and why history is so essential to individuals’ awareness of their location in the world and to every group and nation’s sense of identity and destiny. He explains why all historians are revisionists while they seek to more fully understand the past, and how they always bring their distinct minds, dispositions, perspectives, and purposes to bear on the subjects they study.

The Ever-Changing Past

The Ever-Changing Past PDF Author: James M. Banner, Jr.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300258240
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

Get Book

Book Description
An experienced, multi-faceted historian shows how revisionist history is at the heart of creating historical knowledge "A rallying cry in favor of historians who, revisiting past subjects, change their minds. . . . Rewarding reading."—Kirkus Reviews History is not, and has never been, inert, certain, merely factual, and beyond reinterpretation. Taking readers from Thucydides to the origin of the French Revolution to the Civil War and beyond, James M. Banner, Jr. explores what historians do and why they do it. Banner shows why historical knowledge is unlikely ever to be unchanging, why history as a branch of knowledge is always a search for meaning and a constant source of argument, and why history is so essential to individuals’ awareness of their location in the world and to every group and nation’s sense of identity and destiny. He explains why all historians are revisionists while they seek to more fully understand the past, and how they always bring their distinct minds, dispositions, perspectives, and purposes to bear on the subjects they study.

The World is Ever Changing

The World is Ever Changing PDF Author: Nicolas Roeg
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571264948
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Nicolas Roeg is one of the most distinctive and influential film-makers of his generation. The generation of film-makers who define contemporary movie-making - Danny Boyle, Kevin Macdonald ( The Last King of Scotland), Christopher Nolan ( The Dark Knight), James Marsh ( Man on Wire), and Guillermo Del Toro ( Pan's Labyrinth), all acknowledge their debt to the work of Nicolas Roeg. Roeg began as a cameraman, working for such masters as Francois Truffaut and David Lean. His explosive debut as a director with Performance, established an approach to film-making that was unconventional and ever-changing, creating works such as Don't Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Bad Timing, Insignificance, and, more recently, Puffball. Having now reached eighty years of age, Roeg has decided to pass on to the next generations, the wealth of wisdom and experience he has garnered over fifty years of film-making.

Being a Historian

Being a Historian PDF Author: James M. Banner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107021596
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Considers what aspiring and mature historians need to know about the discipline of history in the United States today.

Imagining the Past

Imagining the Past PDF Author:
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820318108
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
How we make history--and what we then make of it--is engagingly dramatized in T. H. Breen's portrait of a 350-year-old American community faced with the costs of its “progress.” In the particulars of one town's struggle to check development and save its natural environment, Breen shows how our sense of history reflects our ever-changing self-perceptions and hopes for the future. Breen first went to East Hampton, the celebrated Long Island resort town, to write about the Mulford Farmstead, a picturesque saltbox dating from the 1680s. Through his research, he came across a fascinating cast of local characters, past and present, who contributed to, invented, and reinvented the town's history. Breen's work also drew him into contemporary local affairs: factionalism among residents, zoning disputes, and debates over resource management. Driving these heated issues, Breen found, were some dearly held notions about a harmonious, agrarian past that conflicted with what he had come to know about the divisiveness and opportunism of East Hampton's early days. Imagining the Past is about the interplay between some of the East Hampton histories Breen encountered: the “official” histories of many generations, the myths and oral traditions, and the curious stories that Breen, as an outsider, discerned in the town's rich holdings of artifacts and documents. With a warm yet wry regard for human nature, Breen obliges us to confront our pasts in all their complexities and ironies, no matter how unsettling or inconvenient the experience.

The Ever-Changing Sky

The Ever-Changing Sky PDF Author: James B. Kaler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521499187
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
The Ever-Changing Sky provides a comprehensive and non-mathematical guide to spherical astronomy. The reader is guided through terrestrial and celestial co-ordinate systems, time measurement and celestial navigation, to the prediction of the rising and setting of the stars, Sun and Moon. It focuses on the geometrical aspects of the night sky without using complex trigonometry. The book progresses to a general study of the Earth and sky, including the stars and constellations (with useful star maps provided), the motions and appearance of the Moon, tides and eclipses, the orbits of the planets and the smaller bodies of the Solar System (asteroids, meteors, meteorites and comets). Finally, there is a brief overview of atmospheric phenomena (including rainbows and haloes). This text will be invaluable to students taking courses in naked-eye astronomy, amateur and professional astronomers, as well as more general readers wanting to know how the night sky changes.

A Past of Possibilities

A Past of Possibilities PDF Author: Quentin Deluermoz
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030022754X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
"What if history, or life, had followed a different path? What is called counterfactual reasoning occurs naturally in conversation to enrich hypotheses on the potentialities of the past and unactualized futures. It permeates literature, political thought and all forms of entertainment. What would have happened if Cleopatra's nose had been shorter? If Donald Trump had won the presidential elections in 2020? Delving into this issue, Quentin Deluermoz and Pierre Singaravélou have meticulously investigated a vast array of literature for a full grasp of the diversity in how counterfactual analysis is used--from the most bizarre uchronic fiction to the most serious scientific hypotheses. They have focused on a precise understanding of the conditions under which its use is legitimate and pertinent for history, whether social, economic or global, and more generally the social sciences, while rethinking the issues of causality and truth, and the relationships between history and fiction, determinism and contingency. Their work has gradually brought to light the rich potential of investigating the possibilities of the past and paved the way for rigorously documented experimentation in both research and education. An ambitious and innovative investigation into the writing of history, its object, and how it can be shared"--

Thinking About History

Thinking About History PDF Author: Sarah Maza
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022610947X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
What distinguishes history as a discipline from other fields of study? That's the animating question of Sarah Maza’s Thinking About History, a general introduction to the field of history that revels in its eclecticism and highlights the inherent tensions and controversies that shape it. Designed for the classroom, Thinking About History is organized around big questions: Whose history do we write, and how does that affect what stories get told and how they are told? How did we come to view the nation as the inevitable context for history, and what happens when we move outside those boundaries? What is the relation among popular, academic, and public history, and how should we evaluate sources? What is the difference between description and interpretation, and how do we balance them? Maza provides choice examples in place of definitive answers, and the result is a book that will spark classroom discussion and offer students a view of history as a vibrant, ever-changing field of inquiry that is thoroughly relevant to our daily lives.

Firefly Lane

Firefly Lane PDF Author: Kristin Hannah
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1429927844
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah comes a powerful novel of love, loss, and the magic of friendship. . . . now a #1 Netflix series! In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the "coolest girl in the world" moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all---beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer's end they've become TullyandKate. Inseparable. So begins Kristin Hannah's magnificent new novel. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives. From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally. In the glittering, big-hair era of the eighties, she looks to men to fill the void in her soul. But in the buttoned-down nineties, it is television news that captivates her. She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success . . . and loneliness. Kate knows early on that her life will be nothing special. Throughout college, she pretends to be driven by a need for success, but all she really wants is to fall in love and have children and live an ordinary life. In her own quiet way, Kate is as driven as Tully. What she doesn't know is how being a wife and mother will change her . . . how she'll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted. And how much she'll envy her famous best friend. . . . For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship---jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they've survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart . . . and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test. Firefly Lane is for anyone who ever drank Boone's Farm apple wine while listening to Abba or Fleetwood Mac. More than a coming-of-age novel, it's the story of a generation of women who were both blessed and cursed by choices. It's about promises and secrets and betrayals. And ultimately, about the one person who really, truly knows you---and knows what has the power to hurt you . . . and heal you. Firefly Lane is a story you'll never forget . . . one you'll want to pass on to your best friend.

The Past is a Foreign Country

The Past is a Foreign Country PDF Author: David Lowenthal
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521294805
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Book Description
Lowentahal looks at the benefits and burdens of the past, how we study the past, and how we change it.

The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation

The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation PDF Author: Paul A. Roth
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810140896
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
In The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation, Paul A. Roth resolves disputes persisting since the nineteenth century about the scientific status of history. He does this by showing why historical explanations must take the form of a narrative, making their logic explicit, and revealing how the rational evaluation of narrative explanation becomes possible. Roth situates narrative explanations within a naturalistic framework and develops a nonrealist (irrealist) metaphysics and epistemology of history—arguing that there exists no one fixed past, but many pasts. The book includes a novel reading of Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, showing how it offers a narrative explanation of theory change in science. This book will be of interest to researchers in historiography, philosophy of history, philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, and epistemology.