Dead Certainties by Simon Schama

Dead Certainties by Simon Schama

Like his The Embarrassment of Riches and the bestselling Citizens, Simon Schama's latest book is both history and literature of immense stylishness and ambition. But Dead Certainties goes beyond these more conventional histories to address the deeper enigmas that confront a student of the past. In order to do so, Schama reconstructs -- and at times reinvents -- two ambiguous deaths: the first, that of General James Wolfe at the battle of Quebec in 1759; the second, in 1849, that of George Parkman, an eccentric Boston brahmin whose murder by an impecunious Harvard professor in 1849 was a grisly reproach to the moral sanctity of his society. Out of these stories -- with all of their bizarre coincidences and contradictions -- Schama creates a dazzling and supremely vital work of historical imagination.

Simon Schama is a Columbia University professor of history and art history and the author of numerous works, including Rough Crossings, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, and The Embarrassment of Wealth. He writes on politics and culture for the Financial Times and has written and presented over fifty documentaries for the BBC, PBS, and the History Channel, including The Power of Art, which won the 2007 International Emmy for Outstanding Arts Programming.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780679402138
ISBN 10	0679402136
Title	Dead Certainties
Author	Simon Schama
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Year published	1991-04-30
Number of pages	333
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.