Mystic Chords Of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture [Hardcover]

Michael Kammen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 5, 1991

With the same exacting scholarship, brilliant cultural analysis, and stylish prose that won him a Pulitzer Prize for A Machine That Would Go of Itself, Kammen examines the paradox of American tradition. How, he asks, did the " land of the future" acquire a past? And how has our collective memory of that past been distorted--and, at times, manufactured? 145 photos.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From Lincoln to FDR to Reagan, America's leaders have invoked a mythic past, and one of the merits of Cornell historian Kammen's massive study is to show that appeals to collective memory can be a means either of resisting change or abetting it. With brilliant erudition Kammen ( A Machine That Would Go of Itself ) clarifies the selective filtering of memory that shaped the traditions and self-images of Yankees, upstart Westerners, Southerners resentful of New Englanders, apologists for Puritan tradition and whites anxious to exclude blacks and Native Americans. He illuminates the clash between modern cosmopolites (e.g., Ezra Pound) and folksy regionalists (Carl Sandburg, Stephen Vincent Benet), then charts the wild trajectory of patriotic sentiment from the Vietnam war to the present. Finally, he looks at the current epidemic of nostalgia, concluding that even as Americans historicize the present, they depoliticize the past as a way to minimize conflict. An important contribution to our understanding of how Americans define themselves and the parameters of freedom. Illustrated. History Book Club selection.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Within the last ten years, many American historians have discovered the importance of collective "memory" in shaping their nation. In some respects following the lead of influential historians from other nations, they now try to understand the forces that shaped the ways in which Americans remember and use their past and what significant events altered their consciousness of history. Long before recent scholars began decrying the dominance of obscure monographs and calling for greater convergence of ideas in historical studies, Kammen had demonstrated that synthesis could be accomplished without sacrificing richness of detail and divergent interpretations. Moreover, he showed that historians could communicate with one another and a wider audience at the same time. This book, part of Kammen's multivolume rethinking of American history, presents his view of the growing dependence on and debate over collective memory as a historical force during four periods since 1870. With great skill he distinguishes the ways Americans adapted their views of the past to fit the needs of their present circumstances. He weaves a command of formal cultural history with a thorough understanding of popular culture into an astonishingly wonderful book that enlightens not only the history of the past century and a quarter but also the present.
- Charles K. Piehl, Mankato State Univ., Minn.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 864 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (November 5, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394577698
• ISBN-13: 978-0394577692
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,420,981 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ground-breaking Panoramic Book on American history, October 28, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (Paperback)

Ranges from John Adams to Ronald Reagan, from the origins of Independence Day to the Vietnam memorial,from the Daughters of the American Revolution to NAACP.
This book was so easy to read b/c it was written by a Pulitzer-Prize winning professional who KNOWS how to engage the reader.
It's in chronological order so you can choose the time periods at your discretion to read about.
This is a thoroughly comprehensive book, which is almost an Encyclopedia Americana, only in highly interesting narrative form. After reading this book, I felt that I truly understood the nature of the American life and it's main historical figures as human beings.
Only complaint was that all the photos were b&w, and there weren't enough.
NYT Book Review said: "Brilliant, idiosyncratic, presented with superlative style laced with refreshing wit."
TIME said: "Fascinating...a subtlle and teeming narrative."

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Is it possible to truly understand the past "as it happened?", April 3, 2006

By 

Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (Paperback)

Michael Kammen questions this possibility and suggests that all meaning about the past is suffused with concerns for the present and shaped by the memory of significance. No area of historical study in the last twenty years has been more important than the nature of memory. The analysis of how stories about the past become a master narrative, and what lessons those teach to those interested in the subject has been a growing area of concern in American history. This book helps to pull those ideas together into a coherent discussion.

At a fundamental level Kammen's subject is the memory of memory, and his entrée point is the cultural institutions that commemorate the past. He asserts that his goal is to discover how "the United States became a land of the past, a culture with a discernable memory (or with a configuration of recognized pasts)" (p. 7). Kammen ranges broadly across the American landscape in time and space, focusing attention on museums, historic sites, patriotic groups, antiquarian groups, and other self-styled keepers of the nation's identity. His discussion of Colonial Williamsburg, as well as other depictions of the past, is an especially interesting aspect of the "Mystic Chords of Memory."

Divided chronologically into four main parts; throughout he offers a level of detail that sometimes strangles his central thesis. That thesis might best be characterized by a concern for "the public's willingness to accept mythical history that is patently unreal." He seeks "genuine remembrance" and laments that "not enough people pay attention to scholarly history" (respectively pp. 129, 137, and 38). Perhaps it is just as well that his thesis is submerged since it has the ring of academic whining. Far too much scholarly work is inaccessible to the interested adult non-historian. At the same time, historical works routinely reach large audiences but almost all are written in an engaging manner and the authors may not necessarily be academically trained historians.

Clearly Michael Kammen makes many important observations in this massive work. It is an important benchmark in American historiography and a worthy reading experience for anyone seeking to understand how its inhabitants remember and interpret the nation's past. At more than 700 pages of text, and another 100 or so of references, it is a substantial tome whose size will dissuade many from fully exploring on its ideas. Too bad, for it is well worth the time.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mystic Chords, September 4, 2009

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Thomas D. Mackie (Harrogate, TN) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mystic Chords Of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (Hardcover)

This is a very important work to understand how Americans developed their heros and create national myths. It was suggested by my doctoral advisor as valuable for my research into public history. Kammen explores how select groups and people in American History gain a public reputation and are used to define what it means to be an American. I found this work most helpful in placing Lincoln's rise to fame in the context of other memorial issues around the country.