Why History Matters: Life and Thought Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Why History Matters: Life and Thought Book

For historian Gerda Lerner, the personal and the professional are inextricably linked. Recently retired from her position as a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Lerner has crafted a profound and powerful meditation on what history means to her, and why it should matter to us. The essays in Why History Matters strongly connect Lerner's Judaism and her dual roles as feminist and historian: "To be a Jew means to live history," she writes, while Judaism's divisions between the sexes--particularly its denial of full participation in synagogue to women--eventually led to her embrace of feminism and her pioneering work in the field of women's history. The position of women and other oppressed groups is of paramount interest to Lerner, and the longest essay in this collection deals with her theories of patriarchy as the father of all discriminatory systems. Class and race are other issues that concern Lerner, and they crop up again here in her discussion of the differences between black and white women's views of feminism. Sex, class, and race--all the hot-flash points at work in today's society--are accounted for in Why History Matter. There are connections, Lerner argues, between the violence, poverty, racism, and sexism we see all around us and the attitudes and events of the past. She has spent her life tracing these causes and effects, encouraged by her belief that understanding the past ensures a better future. And that, Gerda Lerner insists, is why history matters.Read More

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  • Product Description

    In Why History Matters, Gerda Lerner sums up her thinking and research of the last sixteen years, combining personal reminiscences with innovative theory that illuminate the importance of history and the vital role women have played in it.

    We read first of Lerner's coming to consciousness as a Jewish woman, of her experiences in Nazi Germany, as well as her decision to become a historian. The second section focuses on more professional concerns. Included here is a fascinating essay on nonviolent resistance, tracing the idea from the Quakers, such as Mary Dyer, to abolitionists, to Thoreau's essay Civil Disobedience, then across the sea to Tolstoy and Gandhi, before finally returning to America during the civil rights movement of the 1950s. The highlight of the final section of the book is Lerner's bold and innovative look at the issues of class and race as they relate to gender. Why History Matters contains some of the most significant thinking on history of this distinguished historian.

  • 0195122895
  • 9780195122893
  • Gerda Lerner
  • 28 May 1998
  • OUP USA
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 272
  • New Ed
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