Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World

"Who Owns History?testifies to Eric Foner's lifelong personal commitment to writing histories that advance the struggle for racial equality and economic justice." David Glassberg,The Sunday Star-Ledger History has become a matter of public controversy, as Americans clash over such things as museum presentations, the flying of the Confederate flag, and reparations for slavery. So whose history is being written? Who owns it? Eric Foner answers these and other questions about the historian's relationship to the world of the past and future in this provocative, even controversial, study of the reasons we care about historyor should.

Eric Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. He is the author of many highly acclaimed works in American history, notably The Story of American Freedom and Reconstruction. He lives in New York City.

Part I: The Politics of History and Historians
1. My Life as a Historian
2. The Education of Richard Hofstadter

Part II: Rethinking History in a Changing World
3. American Freedom in a Global Age
4. The Russians Write a New History
5. "We Must Forget the Past": History in the New South Africa
6. Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?

Part III: The Enduring Civil War
7. Who Is an American?
8. Blacks and the U.S. Constitution
9. Ken Burns and the Romance of Reunion

Notes
Index