Remembered Past: John Lukacs On History Historians & Historical Knowledge [Paperback]

John Lukacs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 2005

Among the most accomplished historians of his generation, John Lukacs has written more than twenty books and hundreds of essays and reviews. His scholarship encompasses the history of the modern age, focusing especially on the political, ideological, intellectual, and military struggles of the twentieth century. Integral to that project has been Lukacs's effort to clarify and interpret the evolution of thought and consciousness during the approximately 500 years that constitute "modern" history. As the modern age passes, as the institutions, ideas, values, and experiences that composed the life of the era recede and disappear, Lukacs has assumed the responsibility to "think about thinking." And for Lukacs, no aspect of thought is more important to understanding the modern age than the emergence of historical consciousness. Remembered Past: John Lukacs on History, Historians, and Historical Knowledge: A Reader draws together Lukacs's scattered and diverse writings on history. The volume serves at once as an introduction to this essential aspect of Lukacs's thought and an indispensable compendium of his most important writings on the subject. In the essays, reviews, commentaries, and book chapters collected in Remembered Past, Lukacs addresses the problem of historical knowledge, evaluates the contributions of historians and writers who have used, and often abused, history, and examines the significance of place in developing a sense of the past. He concludes with a consideration of the twentieth century and the task of reading, writing, and teaching history. Significantly, this authorized "reader" also includes a complete bibliography of Lukacs?s writings through 2003.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"John Lukacs is an original. His opinions, whether on Winston Churchill, Tom Wolfe, or Alexis de Tocqueville, are stimulating, infuriating, profound, never dull. He is a marvelously agile writer who provides the reader great pleasure while he takes him plumbing for the truth." - Witold Rybczynski, University of Pennsylvania

"John Lukacs, a premier intellectual and a historian of enviable breadth and depth, is as wise, witty, and penetrating as he is sometimes infuriating. With clarity, grace, and power, he illuminates the course of modern history, while he disposes of the cant, fads, and silliness that mark much of today's historical writing."-Eugene D. Genovese, author, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made

"It was about time that a John Lukacs Reader should be brought out, to show the public the range and depth of this great living historian?s contribution to knowledge, his importance as a thinker and attractiveness as a narrator of events. The editors' generous selection of types of work and subjects warrants changing Reader to Treasury."-Jacques Barzun, author, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present

"Remembered Past is an indispensable volume for the student of John Lukacs's thought ,and more broadly, for any student of history. These collected essays and reviews are as relevant today as they were when first published?indeed, in some cases, even more so. In a field dominated by ideologues who view human beings as simply cogs in the great historical machine, Lukacs restores man to his central place in history and reminds us of the grave moral responsibilities that accompany our free will."-Scott P. Richert, executive editor, Chronicles

"John Lukacs is inimitable; no other elder of our profession can handle such a variety of problems, persons and episodes with a touch so personal and an intelligence so profound."-Geoffrey Best, Fellow of the British Academy

About the Author

John Lukacs Was born in Budapest, in 1924, came to the United States in 1946. Until his retirement, he taught history at Chestnut Hill College near Philadelphia. He also held visiting professorships at Columbia, Johns Hopkins, Tufts, and the University of Pennsylvania. A prolific writer, Lukacs's best-known works include The Duel (Yale University Press, 2001), Five Days in London (Yale Nota Bene, 2001), The End of the Twentieth Century and the End of the Modern Age (Ticknor & Fields, 1993), A Thread of Years (Yale University Press, 1999), and Historical Consciousness (Transaction Publishers, 1994).

Product Details

• Paperback: 900 pages
• Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute; 1 edition (March 31, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932236287
• ISBN-13: 978-1932236286
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #450,961 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best of John Lukacs, and that's saying a lot, November 5, 2006

By 

Amateur historian "Adri" (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Remembered Past: John Lukacs On History Historians & Historical Knowledge (Paperback)

For those of us who have discovered John Lukacs and his wise, witty way of uncovering the past to make sense of the present, this is a "must have" book. His observations cut through the Left-Right rethoric and shows the common mistaken assumtions they both share. For example, he decries the puerilization of American life and politics of the sixties. But after agreeing with the Right in that, he goes on to say that this puerilization began in the fifties, under Eisenhower, an icon of the Right (Lukacs does not think much of him...). He decries anti-communism in that, becoming a reflex, it replaced a sober assessment of the peril and, also the limit of the peril, that the USSr represented, depriving us of an intelligent Foreign Policy - see his comments on Churchill's second premiership and how his efforts were torpedoed by Eisenhower, which meant a hardening of the USSR's position (Churchill, unlike those who shrilly saw the specter of Communism coming to engulf them, predicted the collapse of the USSR in the lifetime of one of his aides, which, by calculating a normal lifespan for the man, meant the eighties. Right on schedule).

Lukacs can be called a Hitler/Churchill specialist, and he can mine a lot of useful lessons out of these chaotic years. He also decries the attempts to make history a science, with a deterministic bent, a belief that he illustrates with enough examples to show you what is at stake - the belief in Free Will, no less (Lukacs is a Catholic - see his review of Hochhuts' "The Vicar" from a Catholic perspective, that only someone who expects great things from the Catholic Church can decry its actions in World War II, and that in the end Pius XII did not have enough faith in his Faith or in his mission).

You get descriptions of Buddapest at the turn of the century, and of Philadelphia (he remembers the once famous Philadelphia essayist Anges Repplier and I hope that this helps brings her back in print). You get reviews of histories and historians, some of which he approves and some not (He does not think much of Hannah Arendt and tells you why, and he admires Simone Weil unreservedly).

I could go on forever, but the gist is, buy it, it is the best use you could make of your $18.00