Spirituals, Freedom Songs, and Lieux de Mémoire: African-American Music and the Routes of Memory
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In countries where the history has not assumed the same didactic role in forming the national consciousness, the history of history need not burden itself with such polemical content. For example, in the United States, a country of plural memories and diverse traditions, historiographical reflection has long been part of the discipline. Different interpretations of the American Revolution or the Civil War may involve high stakes but do not threaten to undermine the American tradition because, in a sense, there is no such thing, or if there is, it is not primarily a historical construct. In France, by contrast, historiography is iconoclastic and irreverent.
America the Good, America the Brave, America the Free: Reviewing the Oxford History of the United States - Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (rev. ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). - Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). - Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). - James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). - David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). - James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). - James T. Patterson, Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). - George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
