Aug 22, 2011
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power & the Production of History (1995)
Pithy one-sentence summary:
History is both an event and its narration and both are produced through power.
Pithy four-sentence critique:
This book should be required reading for anyone who ever even THINKS of calling him/her/themselves an historian. And for everyone who ever wants to be a teacher. Or who doesn't understand that it won't kill you to check your privilege. And we should all have to read it once every couple of years, just to remind ourselves of the way our field works and what not to do.