Beyond the Battlefield by David Blight

1494 Words3 Pages

Beyond the Battlefield by David Blight David W. Blight's book Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory and the American Civil War, is an intriguing look back into the Civil War era which is very heavily studied but misunderstood according to Blight. Blight focuses on how memory shapes history Blight feels, while the Civil War accomplished it goal of abolishing slavery, it fell short of its ultimate potential to pave the way for equality. Blight attempts to prove that the Civil War does little to bring equality to blacks. This book is a composite of twelve essays which are spilt into three parts. The Preludes describe blacks during the era before the Civil War and their struggle to over come slavery and describes the causes, course and consequences of the war. Problems in Civil War memory describes black history and deals with how during and after the war Americans seemed to forget the true meaning of the war which was race. And the postludes describes some for the leaders of black society and how they are attempting to keep the memory and the real meaning of the Civil War alive and explains the purpose of studying historical memory. Memory plays a very important in how history is interpreted. As time goes on and an event slips further into the past some of the memory's that are passed on are distorted and can change entirely. Things that happened during the Civil War that may have seemed important are replaced with things that may seem more important to us now.

Show More
Related

  • If I Die in a Combat Zone by Tim O'Brien

    982 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tim O'Brien is confused about the Vietnam War. He is getting drafted into it, but is also protesting it. He gets to boot camp and finds it very difficult to know that he is going off to a country far away from home and fighting a war that he didn't believe was morally right. Before O'Brien gets to Vietnam he visits a military Chaplin about his problem with the war. "O'Brien I am really surprised to hear this. You're a good kid but you are betraying you country when you say these things"(60). This says a lot about O'Brien's views on the Vietnam War. In the reading of the book, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Tim O'Brien explains his struggles in boot camp and when he is a foot soldier in Vietnam.

    Read More

  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

    759 Words  | 2 Pages

    Eric Foner is able to dissect racial issues from an historical perspective, and show how these issues remained at the heart of the controversy surrounding the period of Reconstruction. By blending historical fact with such emotionally charged issues as race and polit...

    Read More

  • Was World War II A Turning Point For African Americans?

    1141 Words  | 3 Pages

    Those studying the experience of African Americans in World War II consistently ask one central question: “Was World War II a turning point for African Americans?” In elaboration, does World War II symbolize a prolongation of policies of segregation and discrimination both on the home front and the war front, or does it represent the start of the Civil Rights Movement that brought racial equality? The data points to the war experience being a transition leading to the civil rights upheavals of the 1960s.

    Read More

  • "Beyond the Front Lines" by Philip Seib

    721 Words  | 2 Pages

    Being a veteran journalist focusing on politics and social issues in the print and television arena, Philip Seib, authored Beyond the Front Lines. He wrote several other books including Headline Diplomacy: How News Coverage Affects Foreign Policy, and The Moral Journalist: Covering the Post-Cold War World. His accolades consist of multiple awards recognizing his newspaper columns and television reporting skills worldwide. Although Seib is a Princeton University and Southern Methodist University graduate, he is now a journalism professor at Marquette University and his curriculum explores international news coverage, media ethics, and new technologies that impact print and television journalist.

    Read More

  • Between A Rock And A Hard Place By Aron Ralston

    1031 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Aron Ralston notifies the reader of a mountaineering trip gone horribly askew. As Aron is dragged through this journey, he also tells us of other trips of when he was put in dire situations. Starting his trip through Canyonlands National Park on April twenty-sixth of two thousand three, Ralston finds company with two female hikers. Together they navigate the canyon until dusk, when the two women split apart from Aron to take a shorter trail. With the darkness closing in on him, Aron comes to a difficult drop off. While trying to descend the slope, a large stone pins Ralston’s hand to the canyon wall indefinitely. This leads to six strenuous days of turmoil

    Read More

  • A Rebuttal of Holocaust Revisionism

    1185 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...an extremely difficult concept to grasp. However, history must always be remembered correctly. Otherwise, as Geoffrey Keynes stated, “history will repeat itself”.

    Read More

  • Remembrance and Forgetfulnes in Eudora Welty's "The Optimist’s Daughter"

    1580 Words  | 4 Pages

    Memory is a common motif for southern literature. Eudora Welty’s novel The Optimist’s Daughter is no exception to this generalization as it strongly entails both aspects of memory – remembrance and forgetfulness. The stark dichotomy of memory can be looked at as both a blessing and a burden. Characters throughout this novel and so many other pieces of southern literature struggle with the past which they wish to keep, but cannot fully, and a past from which they want to escape, but cannot fully. Memory, in its purest form, can best be described as a creature’s mental capability to accumulate, hold on to, and retrieve information. In southern literature, this same definition can be applied to memory. The south, plain and simple, is all about heritage, and this same concept can be applied to the literature of the south. There are those things the south wants to remember and those things it wants to forget. The antebellum age of the south was between the dawn of the United States and the beginning of the civil war. The south has many memories about the time period prior to the war, both good and bad. There are the parts of their heritage which they wish to remember such as the plantation south and strong family ties as well as those they wish to forget, such as slavery, their loss of the civil war, and the reconstruction period that the civil war led to. The south’s loss in the civil war may have been hard to cope with, but it still has had the longest lasting impact. One simple question with so many complex answers can be asked to sum up the feelings of the south – “heritage or hate”.

    Read More

  • The Impact Of The Reconstruction Era And The Civil Rights Movement

    1324 Words  | 3 Pages

    For this paper the topics that will be discussed are going to cover the Reconstruction era and the Civil Rights movement. These two topics are important to understand the impact that they had on society and the country as a whole. A nation that is still struggling to understand its own identity, during these periods there was a clash of visions to create what America’s image is today. Even though these events occurred one hundred years apart, the message was clearly related on the idea of equality. These events single handedly fought for social tolerance amongst black and white Americans, without these events who knows how our country would have developed.

    Read More

  • Appalling In Soldier's Heart By Gary Paulsen

    606 Words  | 2 Pages

    "War is always, in all ways, appalling." Those are the first words Gary Paulsen used in his book Soldiers Heart. Paulsen uses these words to express what war is like. And just like he said it is appalling. In the beginning of going into war, you might want to be there. Someone might just want to go to experience something new and different. But it will be horrific. And Gary Paulsen is right, he showed so many ways how war is appalling.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of 'Public History In Public Service'

    265 Words  | 1 Pages

    One obvious dilemma to portraying African American history is how to display the information to the public while being objective, but still teaching the tragic applications this has for the human community. When emphasizing the physical conditions in addition to the psychological neurosis that slavery and institutional oppression has had on the black community it may come across to some of the target audience as a bias and subjective argument. As Horton brings attention to in “Public History in Public Service” there is a notion held an overwhelming group of people, mostly white, who feel slavery was hardly brutality, but a mutually beneficial and cohesive agreement between slaves and slave owners (809). Furthermore, the new information provided

    Read More

  • David Blight And The Civil War Summary

    235 Words  | 1 Pages

    Yale Professor David Blight's book examines four writers he believes to be important in the study of the Civil War. These authors are: Robert Penn Warren, Bruce Catton, Edmund Wilson, and James Baldwin. He believes these four were significant in the literary works about the Civil War and left a profound impact on our Civil War understanding. These men represent the turn of the twentieth century views of the Civil War. The divergent backgrounds of the four writers provide different points of view with which David Blight tackles the literary view of racism, the war, and the Lost Cause. The intent of the book is to create an uncomfortable feeling in the reader's comprehension of all that is related to the Civil War as they are challenged on what

    Read More

  • Embracing Defeat By John Dower

    1276 Words  | 3 Pages

    John Dower’s Embracing Defeat challenges the idea that history is written from the perspective of the winner, a concept widely taught and promoted as true. Embracing Defeat is far more than simply a history book; it is the examination of the multiplicity of reactions, the outbreak of culture and counter-culture, as well as the development of various stereotypes that the loss in World War II brought upon the Japanese.

    Read More

  • The Sorrow Of War Sparknotes

    1195 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Sorrow of War is a novel written by Vietnamese writer, Bao Ninh. First published in 1990, it came from being his graduation project to one of the most prestigious piece of literature in history. This work of fiction focuses solely on a seventeen-year-old male named Kien and his life from pre-war to post-war. What many people are oblivious to is the fact that Ninh had his own share of time in war when he served in the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. Having said that, it is utterly safe to imply that Ninh’s time in war has a strong reflection in Kien’s characteristic traits and experiences that he endured in the novel.

    Read More

  • The Killing Fields By Sydney Scanberg

    347 Words  | 1 Pages

    The Killing Fields is a movie i based on a true story. Sydney Schanberg a reporter for the New york times and he is given the job Cambodian Civil war in 1970 with help of Dith Pran a local interpreter. Also helping is Al Rockoff an American photojournalist . The country is falling apart and the situation becomes extremely dangerous for them . Schanberg and Pran both have the opportunity to be evacuated . Schanberg willingly stay to continue covering. Pran is convinced into staying and stays behind with Schanberg. Shortly after this Schanberg is arrested with a group of western journalist are intimidated by execution.Pran as a great friend and Colleague is able to convince the guards that Schanberg is harmless. Sequently, They make

    Read More

  • Cultural Trauma And Collective Memory: The Consequences Of Slavery

    408 Words  | 1 Pages

    Our societies, politics, behaviors, cultures and way of thinking is closely related to historical events. Sometimes these events can produce positive outcomes or irremediable ones. The damages caused by the phenomenon called slavery were countless, and unfortunately the negative outcomes are still alive in modern-society. Take, for example, the position of people of color in the United States of America. Cultural trauma and collective memory is an article that exposes the consequences of slavery in America from a psychological prospective. The article explains how our memories are damaged by past slavery and how these traumatic experiences developed a collective though, shared across the country.

    Read More

More about Beyond the Battlefield by David Blight

Open Document