The Undivided Past by David Cannadine

The Undivided Past by David Cannadine

From one of our most acclaimed historians, a wise and provocative call to re-examine the way we look at the past: not merely as the story of incessant conflict between groups but also of human solidarity throughout the ages.

Investigating the six most salient categories of human identity, difference, and confrontation--religion, nation, class, gender, race, and civilization--David Cannadine questions just how determinative each of them has really been. For while each has motivated people dramatically at particular moments, they have rarely been as pervasive, as divisive, or as important as is suggested by such simplified polarities as us versus them, black versus white, or the clash of civilizations. For most of recorded time, these identities have been more fluid and these differences less unbridgeable than political leaders, media commentators--and some historians--would have us believe. Throughout history, in fact, fruitful conversations have continually taken place across these allegedly impermeable boundaries of identity: the world, as Cannadine shows, has never been simply and starkly divided between any two adversarial solidarities but always an interplay of overlapping constituencies.

Yet our public discourse is polarized more than ever around the same simplistic divisions, and Manichean narrative has become the default mode to explain everything that is happening in the world today. With wide-ranging erudition, David Cannadine compellingly argues against the pervasive and pernicious idea that conflict is the inevitable state of human affairs. The Undivided Past is an urgently needed work of history, one that is also about the present--and the future.

David Cannadine is Dodge Professor of History at Princeton University and General Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He is one of the world's best-known historians and historical biographers, and an expert on Churchill and political leadership. The author or editor of thirty
books, David Cannadine is also a regular broadcaster on radio and television. His most recent publications include The Undivided Past (2013) and George V: the Unexpected King (2014), as well as the series Prime Ministers' Props for BBC Radio 4 (2016).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780307269072
ISBN 10	0307269078
Title	The Undivided Past
Author	David Cannadine
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Knopf Publishing Group
Year published	2013-04-09
Number of pages	352
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.