How History Gets Things Wrong

How History Gets Things Wrong PDF Author: Alex Rosenberg
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026234842X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why we learn the wrong things from narrative history, and how our love for stories is hard-wired. To understand something, you need to know its history. Right? Wrong, says Alex Rosenberg in How History Gets Things Wrong. Feeling especially well-informed after reading a book of popular history on the best-seller list? Don't. Narrative history is always, always wrong. It's not just incomplete or inaccurate but deeply wrong, as wrong as Ptolemaic astronomy. We no longer believe that the earth is the center of the universe. Why do we still believe in historical narrative? Our attachment to history as a vehicle for understanding has a long Darwinian pedigree and a genetic basis. Our love of stories is hard-wired. Neuroscience reveals that human evolution shaped a tool useful for survival into a defective theory of human nature. Stories historians tell, Rosenberg continues, are not only wrong but harmful. Israel and Palestine, for example, have dueling narratives of dispossession that prevent one side from compromising with the other. Henry Kissinger applied lessons drawn from the Congress of Vienna to American foreign policy with disastrous results. Human evolution improved primate mind reading—the ability to anticipate the behavior of others, whether predators, prey, or cooperators—to get us to the top of the African food chain. Now, however, this hard-wired capacity makes us think we can understand history—what the Kaiser was thinking in 1914, why Hitler declared war on the United States—by uncovering the narratives of what happened and why. In fact, Rosenberg argues, we will only understand history if we don't make it into a story.

How History Gets Things Wrong

How History Gets Things Wrong PDF Author: Alex Rosenberg
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026234842X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why we learn the wrong things from narrative history, and how our love for stories is hard-wired. To understand something, you need to know its history. Right? Wrong, says Alex Rosenberg in How History Gets Things Wrong. Feeling especially well-informed after reading a book of popular history on the best-seller list? Don't. Narrative history is always, always wrong. It's not just incomplete or inaccurate but deeply wrong, as wrong as Ptolemaic astronomy. We no longer believe that the earth is the center of the universe. Why do we still believe in historical narrative? Our attachment to history as a vehicle for understanding has a long Darwinian pedigree and a genetic basis. Our love of stories is hard-wired. Neuroscience reveals that human evolution shaped a tool useful for survival into a defective theory of human nature. Stories historians tell, Rosenberg continues, are not only wrong but harmful. Israel and Palestine, for example, have dueling narratives of dispossession that prevent one side from compromising with the other. Henry Kissinger applied lessons drawn from the Congress of Vienna to American foreign policy with disastrous results. Human evolution improved primate mind reading—the ability to anticipate the behavior of others, whether predators, prey, or cooperators—to get us to the top of the African food chain. Now, however, this hard-wired capacity makes us think we can understand history—what the Kaiser was thinking in 1914, why Hitler declared war on the United States—by uncovering the narratives of what happened and why. In fact, Rosenberg argues, we will only understand history if we don't make it into a story.

History Stories for Children

History Stories for Children PDF Author: Christian Liberty PR
Publisher: Christian Liberty Press
ISBN: 9781932971071
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book Here

Book Description
History Stories for Children exposes children to a wide variety of wholesome stories based upon famous historical events and personalities from the Bible, America and around the world. Students sharpen their reading skills while they learn about King David, Alexander the Great, George Washington and many others. The stories within this volume can be used to enhance a wide variety of unit or topical studies. Grade 3.

History Stories for Children

History Stories for Children PDF Author: John W. Wayland
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781930092341
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description


Texas History Stories

Texas History Stories PDF Author: Elbridge Gerry Littlejohn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Alamo (San Antonio, Tex.)
Languages : en
Pages : 300

Get Book Here

Book Description
Relates the stories of thirteen heroes or events in nineteenth-century Texas history, including Cabeza de Vaca, Sam Houston and the Alamo.

Chinese History Stories

Chinese History Stories PDF Author: Renee Ting
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781885008374
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Presents stories of kings and queens, generals, battles, and courtiers from the Zhou Dynasty, when China was ruled by kings from 1046 BC to 221 BC. It was the period before the country was unified under a single emperor, when each state schemed to become more powerful than its neighbor, leading to many exciting stories populated by famous historical figures"--Jacket.

The Truth about Stories

The Truth about Stories PDF Author: Thomas King
Publisher: House of Anansi
ISBN: 0887846963
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Get Book Here

Book Description
Winner of the 2003 Trillium Book Award "Stories are wondrous things," award-winning author and scholar Thomas King declares in his 2003 CBC Massey Lectures. "And they are dangerous." Beginning with a traditional Native oral story, King weaves his way through literature and history, religion and politics, popular culture and social protest, gracefully elucidating North America's relationship with its Native peoples. Native culture has deep ties to storytelling, and yet no other North American culture has been the subject of more erroneous stories. The Indian of fact, as King says, bears little resemblance to the literary Indian, the dying Indian, the construct so powerfully and often destructively projected by White North America. With keen perception and wit, King illustrates that stories are the key to, and only hope for, human understanding. He compels us to listen well.

A Little History of the World

A Little History of the World PDF Author: E. H. Gombrich
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300213972
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Get Book Here

Book Description
E. H. Gombrich's Little History of the World, though written in 1935, has become one of the treasures of historical writing since its first publication in English in 2005. The Yale edition alone has now sold over half a million copies, and the book is available worldwide in almost thirty languages. Gombrich was of course the best-known art historian of his time, and his text suggests illustrations on every page. This illustrated edition of the Little History brings together the pellucid humanity of his narrative with the images that may well have been in his mind's eye as he wrote the book. The two hundred illustrations—most of them in full color—are not simple embellishments, though they are beautiful. They emerge from the text, enrich the author's intention, and deepen the pleasure of reading this remarkable work. For this edition the text is reset in a spacious format, flowing around illustrations that range from paintings to line drawings, emblems, motifs, and symbols. The book incorporates freshly drawn maps, a revised preface, and a new index. Blending high-grade design, fine paper, and classic binding, this is both a sumptuous gift book and an enhanced edition of a timeless account of human history.

U.S. History

U.S. History PDF Author: P. Scott Corbett
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1886

Get Book Here

Book Description
U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.

366

366 PDF Author: William B. Marsh
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description


Suicide and Euthanasia

Suicide and Euthanasia PDF Author: Samuel E. Wallace
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Euthanasia
Languages : en
Pages : 174

Get Book Here

Book Description