War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century

Collaborative volume examining how wars have been remembered in Europe, America and the Middle East.

The vivid and traumatic phenomenon of war provides the basis for a detailed examination of how war has been remembered collectively this century. Material is drawn from Europe, America and Israel to show that small groups of survivors act together in order to preserve a piece of the past.How war has been remembered collectively is the central question in this volume. War in the twentieth century is a vivid and traumatic phenomenon which left behind it survivors who engage time and time again in acts of remembrance. This volume, containing essays by outstanding scholars of twentieth-century history, focuses on the issues raised by the shadow of war in this century. The behaviour, not of whole societies or of ruling groups alone, but of the individuals who do the work of remembrance, is discussed by examining the traumatic collective memory resulting from the horrors of the First World War, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and the Algerian War. By studying public forms of remembrance, such as museums and exhibitions, literature and film, the editors have succeeded in bringing together a volume which demonstrates that a popular kind of collective memory is still very much alive.