The Pursuit Of History By John Tosh

When Kathleen accuses Tim of being obsessed with war stories, he points out that it's not that he's obsessed with war stories – he's just obsessed with stories, period: “I feel guilty sometimes. Forty-three years old and I'm still writing war stories. My daughter Kathleen tells me it's an obsession…As a writer, all you can do is pick a street and go for the ride, putting things down as they come. That's the real obsession. All those stories” (O’Brien 31). Because he's a writer, he uses stories to process memories, and his memories are of war. This plays into his whole thing about story-truth, too: stories are based in memory, not in fact. He remembers so he does not forget, and yet what he remembers is not the "reality" but the stories: “Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future” (O’Brien 33). Although Kathleen assumes O’Brien writes stories to hide the truth, O’Brien sees writing as a way to remember the past and make memories last forever. O’Brien loves the broad meaning behind stories such as imagination and creating a timelapse, while Kathleen wants to pinpoint a certain reason for his obsession to

World War II is primarily known to be a war that established peace and equality throughout Nazi Germany and its allies. This war according to many, came to be known as the “good war”, but not to Ronald Takaki. One revisionist argument he makes about the “good war” was that it was not good or equal in any sense. In the first paragraph of Double Victory, Takaki argues that “The ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ was not democratic: defense jobs were not open to all regardless of race. The war against Nazi Germany was fought with a Jim Crow army” (5). Based on previous knowledge of WW2, history does not discuss the side of history where segregation and racism were also a present problem amongst the American people and on their own

One Spanish official remarked that “the maxim of the conqueror must be to settle.” Explain what you think he meant by this statement. Illustrate the various ways conquerors settled the New World, commenting on what worked, what did not work, and the consequences of those methods

When faced with questions about war Tim, could react in two ways protection of the outsider or let the outsider hear the war stories. "When she was nine, my daughter Kathleen asked if I had ever killed anyone. She knew about the war; she knew - been a soldier. "You keep writing these war stories," she said, "so I guess you - killed somebody. " It was a difficult moment, but I did what seemed right, which was to say, "Of course not," and then to take her onto my lap and hold her for a while (131).

History is the totality of all past human events, and historiography is the written record of what is known about our lives and societies. In the recent past, history lessons were meant to convey a certain patriotism or to turn an immigrant into a “true American,” but today too many historians are using historical analysis for political purposes. This probably dates to the tumultuous times of the 1960s. Gordon Wood offers a prescription for the proper use of history. Shunning the ideologues of today, he believes historians should “seek to study past events not to make trans-historical generalizations about human behavior but to understand those events as they actually were, in all their peculiar contexts and circumstances.”

Chavez uses the “Latino Threat Narrative” to compare the Hispanics to the “German language threat, the Catholic threat, the Chinese and Japanese language threat, and the southern and eastern European threats.” He suggests that “each was pervasive and defined “truths” about the threat posed by immigrants that, in hindsight, were unjustified or never materialized in the long run of history.” Chavez was trying to explain that the Hispanic would pattern these other threats by upsetting the America people. He states that “… the Latino Threat Narrative is part of a grand tradition of alarmist discourse about immigrants and their perceived negative impacts on society.”

The book Silencing The Past is about how people “silence” the past through selective memories to benefit us in the present. We pick out certain events and either dramatize them or play them down to the point of no importance. This paper is about both our played up dramas and our forgotten realities.

It is essential to remember though that sentiments should rarely come at the expense of knowledge. James Oliver Horton notes that in regards to slavery, “Americans react strongly to the topic, but few know much about it.” Historians have the potential to spark a significant conversation with the public and employing knowledge can restructure people’s notions of the past. Information is critical when it comes to history because without it, opinions mean very little and passions are built upon misconceptions. Because historians actively deal in the past, they have the ability to be the reservoir of knowledge that the public so desperately needs. By tackling the fallacies head on, historians and historical interpreters can inform individuals on a variety of topics. Furthermore, once this knowledge is shared, the trickle effect could be

The idea of the exclusion of important narratives is a common theme amongst many of the historians involved in the discussion. The omission of such narratives would only stand to present an unfinished version of history from which one cannot grasp the lessons history intends to teach. Catherine Emerson would be the first to

Fowler’s opening paragraph consists of an exemplification that immediately supports his opening sentence. He uses Mark Twain’s experience in Versailles, told in The Innocents Abroad, to prove how people tend to focus on what is the “good past,” while the past that shamed the people

2,300 years ago, Aristotle founded the basic principle that almost every great speech since then has been written upon-the three persuasive appeals. Around 76 years ago, Franklin D. Roosevelt put these principles to practice himself; giving what is thought to be one of the most famous American political speeches of the 20th Century-his Infamy Speech. While the speech isn’t complex in neither wording nor depth, it has been analysed over and over again by scholars, politicians, historians, and the like for its direct and purposeful approach. Given the day after the Pearl Harbor attack, the speech had two purposes; to urge Congress to formally declare war on Japan (which

In Telling the Truth About History, three historians discuss how the expanded skepticism and the position that relativism has reduced our capacity to really know and to expound on the past. The book talks about the written work of history and how individuals are battling with the issues of what is “truth.” It likewise examines the post-modernist development and how future historians

In this paper, I will be outlining the costs and benefits of social and technological fixes, and then I will be assessing the use of social and technological fixes of air pollution through the use of automobiles.

“The Headstrong Historian”, a short story among a collection of stories written by Chimamanda Adichie in the novel, The Thing Around Your Neck talks about a woman who gives her only son, who was born after several miscarriages, off to foreigners to train him in the English language in order to be a better public speaker, so he could win a property acquisition case against her in-laws in court, following her husband’s death, but instead, he gets completely transformed by the statutes of the white man and she has no choice but to accept him even when he tries to impose the white man’s practices on her. In this paper, I’m going to be using the concepts of Ambivalence and Hegemony, and Bechdel Test and Gender

Why rehash and put on the tube the negativity of life for every recurring commemoration? It 's important to know what happened and remember the outcomes in our hearts, then put it to rest. Why keep it alive and let the wounds keep on burning? Showing, and talking about it, keeps it alive and as such, is an inspiration for the weak minds. We saw and heard the mimicking of those saddening episodes multiplying, instead than diminishing, not to mention the special interest that lies behind the feeding of the pain, orchestrated for the money that such recurrence can generate. What can be targeted as a negative impact shouldn 't be kept alive, but replaced with a positive, for a positive inspiration as a simple and healthy equation. They say we have to remember the negative that was done. I say: I rather forget it, remembering a happy positive one, makes me feel better. What we are projecting with our minds, is what we get, the option selected and what derives out of it, is rightfully ours.