The Public History Reader

“The Reader provides…key pieces such as an extract from Raphael Samuel’s Theatre of Memory, Paul Ashton and Paula Hamilton’s History at the Crossroad: Australian and the Pasts, and Roy Rosenzweig and David Thalen’s The Presence of the Past: Popular uses of History in American Life. As well as…national surveys… there is also a fascinating chapter by Lawrence Scott drawing on an oral history project with sugarcane workers...[this] will make a valuable contribution to those studying public history.” - Graham Smith, Oral History

"Kean and Martin's volume will be invaluable for anyone interested in public history. It is characterised by its generous reach: it includes work and ideas from many countries; it stresses the diverse forms public history takes and the range of communities that actively participate in making it; it shows how it can be innovative and challenge settled assumptions about both the past and its representation. This book will help its readers think in an engaged yet critical manner about the processes and social practices underpinning public history, and its complex, sometimes disturbing resonances in everyday life, for example, when atrocities need to be recognised and understood. Hilda Kean and Paul Martin have provided an extremely useful point of access to one of the most lively and important parts of history today." - Ludmilla Jordanova, King's College London, UK

"This will become an essential text for all those interested in the interrogation of everyday experience, who regard history as a social form of knowledge, the work of a thousand different hands. Kean and Martin are in the vanguard of the study of Public History helping us challenge conventional approaches to history. In this volume they have brought together not only some of its leading texts but embraced its rich cross-disciplinary appeal, drawing upon film makers, novelists and curators as well as those who have taught history, geography or anthropology. Conscientiously researched, insightful and intelligently compiled, this is a crucial compendium for all who want to understand the rich discourses of public history." - Paul Gough, University of the West of England, UK

"Enriched by enticing examples from around the world, The Public History Reader illuminates how the past is made into history by many kinds of people, including professional historians but also individuals and groups determined to explore and represent their own histories. The Reader showcases the diverse tangible and intangible sources we use to make public histories, and highlights how histories matter - and why they are contested - for individuals, institutions, communities and nations." - Alistair Thomson, Monash University, Australia

"Kean and Martin have worked editorial magic in pulling these diverse contributions into a framework that allows all the pieces to fit together in a cohesive whole ... a book that provides a view of public history as focusing not just on people’s history and on stories that are often ignored, but also on under-represented (or perhaps just underappreciated) spaces and their importance to the larger historical landscape. As such, this book will be appreciated by a range of scholars interested in history, its local and spatial nature, its audiences, and its creation." - Mary A. Larson, The Oral History Review