How should history be presented to the public in an increasingly demotic age of movies, television, and YouTube? Are images now replacing words? To what extent have the bitter academic disputes of recent decades shaped or warped popular views of the past? Have journalists, pundits, and politicians been more successful? These and other issues constitute Black’s stunningly erudite attempt to bridge the gap between traditional historiography and public history, most notably by explicating how history has been used to unite and to divide as well as to justify and discredit views of the present.
Black begins with the observation that governments have been increasingly shaping the past, especially in the 120 new states founded since 1945. But established nations have done the same thing. Witness Japan’s elites overlooking Japanese atrocities committed in China during World War II or, more ominously, China’s leaders refusing to acknowledge the murderous regime of Mao...