Tag Archives: review

02/6/11

Remember the History

The book review “Race and Reunion” by David Blight sounds like a interesting book. This book is interesting because people can know how others remembered the history of the Civil War. Just like what the review said, these studies is the conviction that memory is a product of history. It is being constructed and in many ways political. I think that most people can benefit from this reading because we can learn about black Americans that were often denied in works. Blight believes that “how we think about the Civil War has everything to do with how we think about race and its history in American life.”

This book review shows how race plays an important role of historical memory. During the Civil War, Northerner fought for the freedom of slavery. The  Southerner fought to keep slavery. In the book review it says how slavery was not part of the Civil War. This shows two different sides that people saw during that period.
Another event that was remembered in many different ways was the Vietnam War.  During the Vietnam War, the United States fought North Vietnam in order to contain communism and stop it from spreading to South Vietnam. Many believe that if we did not fight this war communism might have spread even further than Vietnam. The other point of view is that many Americans thought it was a waste of our military soldiers and a waste of time. U.S.A spent many years in Vietnam and lost a great deal of soldier during the war only to have lost. I think that some memories are politically motivated since we have different points of view can may motivate others.

02/5/11

His-story

David Blight’s book, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, sounds extremely intriguing. He offers another view to the Civil War, and brings in the impact of African Americans. When we learn about the Civil War in school we are told a certain story, a story that usually omits certain truths. By reading this book one would gain a whole new prospective of our history. This book helps bring to light the power of written history, and the fact that history is just one person’s perspective about what happened at a certain time. No matter who is telling the event there will always be some bias. Everybody would benefit from reading such a book, because it shows us that what we learnt in the past might not be true. We all know that every person has his side of the story, and that when you put both sides together you usually get a story close to the real one. By bringing in the importance of African American’s in the Civil War we begin to learn about our history from a different lens.

An even that has many different viewpoints around the world is the United States’ bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. America and Japan each have a different memory of this event. In America’s mind they were just retaliating to the horrible attack at Pearl Harbor. America was minding their own business, and out of nowhere Japan decided to bomb our naval base. In the Japanese minds America is evil. They went too far, and it was uncalled for. They unleashed the first nuclear weapon, and they responded much harsher than they should have. These different viewpoints over the same event are obviously politically motivated. America wants to show that they are right, and that they were defending their homeland. On the other hand, Japan wants to show that America is a malevolent country, and that what they did has no justification.