David Lowenthal

Lowenthal David

Professor Emeritus David Lowenthal

Discusses nostalgia, history, and preservation, explains how the past influences the future, and analyzes modern feelings toward the past

The Past is a Foreign Country

Charles de Secondat baron de Montesquieu

Charles de Secondat Montesquieu

"It is wonderful to have David Lowenthal's splendid translation of Montesquieu's Considerations on the Causes of The Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline back in print. This neglected masterpiece deserves attention from all who are concerned with self-government -- whether their focus is on its history or on its prospects in our own time." -- Paul A Rahe, Jay P Walker Professor of History, University of Tulsa.

Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline

The past remains essential - and inescapable. A quarter-century after the publication of his classic account of man's attitudes to his past, David Lowenthal revisits how we celebrate, expunge, contest and domesticate the past to serve present needs. He shows how nostalgia and heritage now pervade every facet of public and popular culture. History embraces nature and the cosmos as well as humanity. The past is seen and touched and tasted and smelt as well as heard and read about. Empathy, re-enactment, memory and commemoration overwhelm traditional history. A unified past once certified by experts and reliant on written texts has become a fragmented, contested history forged by us all. New insights into history and memory, bias and objectivity, artefacts and monuments, identity and authenticity, and remorse and contrition, make this book once again the essential guide to the past that we inherit, reshape and bequeath to the future.

The Past Is a Foreign Country – Revisited

Environmental Perception and Behavior

Kenneth Olwig

The idea that the heritage of nature is fundamentally cultural is provocative to many, but it is becoming increasingly accepted in the context of heritage preservation. It is argued here that a person’s perspective on natural vs. cultural heritage as a contested patrimony is, to some extent, governed by one’s intellectual and geographical position. In discourses influenced by the natural sciences culture is a heritage of nature, whereas in those deriving from the humanities and social sciences, nature is defined socio-culturally. There is also, however, a geographical dimension to how one looks at the nature culture relation. From at least the time of Aristotle, the North has been identified with a cultural heritage thought to derive from the northern natural environment. It was no longer culture, as represented by the architectural monuments of the South, but the natural landscape that provided the measure for both natural and cultural heritage, as the natural landscape and its ecosystems were put in focus. This essay provides a contemporary picture of the long-standing contestation between natural and cultural heritage that provided the basis for the northern perspective taken in these essays. This book was previously published as a special issue of The International Journal of Heritage Studies.

The Nature of Cultural Heritage, and the Culture of Natural Heritage

Ethics and Politics in Dramatic Form

Shakespeare and the Good Life

Like Darwin's Origin of Species, Marsh's Man and Nature marked the inception of a truly modern way of looking at the world, of taking care lest we irreversibly degrade the fabric of humanized nature we are bound to manage. Marsh's ominous warnings inspired reforestation, watershed management, soil conservation, and nature protection in his day and ours."--

George Perkins Marsh, Prophet of Conservation

Marcus Binney

Why Do We Save It?

Our Past Before Us

In separate chapters on The Tempest, King Lear, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, and A Midsummer Night's Dream (many of which have appeared elsewhere in journals or essay collections), the author explores Shakespeare's philosophy and examines its treatment by other critics, from Ben Jonson to A.C. Bradley. He contends that Shakespeare was an independently thinking follower of the classical philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and explores such themes as the playwright's treatment of the philosopher king, natural versus conventional justice, contending views of the best regime and the best life, the moral character of the universe, the Biblical alternative to classical philosophy, and the Christian view of temperance. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A paperback edition of a critically-acclaimed 1998 study of the meaning and effects of 'Heritage'.

The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History

George Perkins Marsh (1801�1882) was the first to reveal the menace of environmental misuse, to explain its causes, and to prescribe reforms. David Lowenthal here offers fresh insights, from new sources, into Marsh�s career and shows his relevance today, in a book which has its roots in but wholly supersedes Lowenthal�s earlier biography George Perkins Marsh: Versatile Vermonter (1958). Marsh�s devotion to the repair of nature, to the concerns of working people, to women�s rights, and to historical stewardship resonate more than ever. His Vermont birthplace is now a national park chronicling American conservation, and the crusade he launched is now global. Marsh�s seminal book Man and Nature is famed for its ecological acumen. The clue to its inception lies in Marsh�s many-sided engagement in the life of his time. The broadest scholar of his day, he was an acclaimed linguist, lawyer, congressman, and renowned diplomat who served 25 years as U.S. envoy to Turkey and to Italy. He helped found and guide the Smithsonian Institution, shaped the Washington Monument, penned potent tracts on fisheries and on irrigation, spearheaded public science, art, and architecture. He wrote on camels and corporate corruption, Icelandic grammar and Alpine glaciers. His pungent and provocative letters illuminate life on both sides of the Atlantic. Like Darwin�s Origin of Species, Marsh�s Man and Nature marked the inception of a truly modern way of looking at the world, of taking care lest we irreversibly degrade the fabric of humanized nature we are bound to manage. Marsh�s ominous warnings inspired reforestation, watershed management, soil conservation, and nature protection in his day and ours. George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation was awarded the Association for American Geographers' 2000 J. B. Jackson Prize. The book was also on the shortlist for the first British Academy Book Prize, awarded in December 2001.

Prophet of Conservation

George Perkins Marsh

"First published as The past is a foreign country, 1985"--Title page verso.

The Past is a Foreign Country - Revisited

Is unity of knowledge possible? Is it desirable? Two rival visions clash. One seeks a single way of explaining everything known and knowable about ourselves and the universe. The other champions diverse modes of understanding served by disparate kinds of evidence. Contrary views pit science against the arts and humanities. Scientists generally laud and seek convergence. Artists and humanists deplore amalgamation as a threat to humane values. These opposing perspectives flamed into hostility in the 1950s "Two Cultures" clash. They culminate today in new efforts to conjoin insights into physical nature and human culture, and new fears lest such syntheses submerge what the arts and humanities most value. This book, stemming from David Lowenthal’s inaugural Stockholm Archipelago Lectures, explores the Two Cultures quarrel’s underlying ideologies. Lowenthal shows how ingrained bias toward unity or diversity shapes major issues in education, religion, genetics, race relations, heritage governance, and environmental policy. Aimed at a general academic audience, Quest for the Unity of Knowledge especially targets those in conservation, ecology, history of ideas, museology, and heritage studies.

David Lowenthal

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