Tragedy, Farce, and Theme Park

>Paul Harvey

Today I'm stealing a post from John Fea, who blogs briefly on the new issue of Books & Culture (and while we're on the subject, here is a podcast previewing the issue):

It is always an exciting day when the new issue of Books and Culture arrives. The July/August issue showed up in my mailbox today. It includes reviews by Bruce Kuklick, Paul Harvey, Susan Wise Bauer, Peter Colcanis, Alan Jacobs, and Karl E. Johnson of books by David Siemers, Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Gina Welch, Ted Striphas, Margaret Wiles, and Judith Shulevitz.
My review in this issue is of Laurie Maffly-Kipp's Setting the Sacred Past: African American Race Histories, which I blogged about previously here.
In the issue as well, James D. Bratt reviews Timothy Roberts, Distant Revolutions: 1848 and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism. Here's the cool opening to the review:

The European revolutions of 1848 were the occasion of Karl Marx's famous dictum that everything in history happens twice—the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. To that, there emerged over the next century and a half an American codicil: first time, tragedy; second time, farce; third time, theme park.

Comments

John Fea said…
Steal away, Paul!
Gerardo Marti said…
Thanks again for highlighting these important books, Paul -- my pile is growing almost every day trying to keep up with you historians... so much reading I barely have time to write!

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