Dangerous Games: The Uses And Abuses Of History (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
A brief discourse on how history is always changing over time, how it can never achieve the analytical precision of science, and how all nations and many non-national groups can shift and alter history to produce narratives, and change it to their favor. Particularly relevant reading this on the day Kim Jong-Il died, as he is one of the people perhaps most guilty of changing history to his ends. I have very mixed feelings about this book: part of MacMillan's case is that the recent turn to the reflexive in History, manifest mainly as a debate among historians about how we do what we do, has taken serious scholarship out of the public domain. There seems to be a clear case being made that methodological reflexivity shoud be abandoned. I may have misread her and imposed meanings that she did not intend (but I don't think so). These two points are not necessarily related – we can be more methodologically reflexive while at the same time being actively involved in the big public debates. That is, I don't see one or the other but both.Where I am with MacMillan is the need that as historians we actively challenge the easy, anti-intellectual, and self-serving uses of history and the past in much public sector discourse. The politicians, columnists, and other not trained in the skills of historical and evidence scepticism that is essential to history have, I think, skewed our broader sense of historical significance (think of the narrow grasp of the specifics of historical events, including basic stuff like when they happened, that we see demonstrated every day in the pub, on the bus, in Parliament, on TV news and current affiars shows). That is to say that those of us who are highly skilled in this area have left the public discourses about the past to those with a barrow to push with the effect that broader historical understandings of the past are throughly inadequate.So, I guess I am a little flattered by the case: MacMillan almost constructs a model of the historian as hero saving the public and the past from the distortions of history imposed by lazy, sound-bite seeking politicians and ideologues: I rather like being the defender of truth.That said, the book is accessible, argumentative, and provocative, and I hope will provide grounds for some spirited debate in my profession. There is also a six page conclusion about the importance of History (the discipline) that I will use with my undergraduates to get a debate going.
What do You think about Dangerous Games: The Uses And Abuses Of History (2010)?
How history can help and hinder political decisions for the future.
—pffudor
A good popular defense of the importance and limits of history.
—caitlinb98
This book sucks. Very disappointing. Has no point.
—VPrideThree
