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Bibliographic Details

Title: Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations
Publisher: Penguin Books / Granta 30/05/1991
Publication Date: 1991
Language: English
ISBN 10: 0140142304
ISBN 13: 9780140142303
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Simon Schama, the author of "The Embarrassment of Riches" and "Citizens", sets out to tell the history of two certainties, of two deaths. In discussing the "speculations" surrounding them, he finds himself involved in a history he cannot classify - the unpredictable history of stories. On 13 September 1759, General James Wolfe, having led the British troops up the St Lawrence to victory in the Battle of Quebec, died on the Heights of Abraham. Schama examines this death, and how Wolfe was made to die again - through the spectacular painting by Benjamin West, and through the writings of the 19th-century historian Francis Parkman. Schama's second death concerns Parkman's uncle, George Parkman of Harvard Medical College, who disappeared in 1849 in mysterious circumstances and who was rumoured to have been murdered by a colleague. Through these incidents, Schama sheds light on the writing of history, the history of history, and the relationship of "story" to "history".

Review

"An infinitely beguiling book...a mind-teasing delight...Schama brings to bear an immense array of narrative elements."

-- The New York Times Book Review

"Intriguing and provocative... Dead Certainties inspires us throughout to examine our own assumptions about history and fiction"-- Newsday

"A virtuoso performance... in Schama's hands the past loses its remoteness and takes on the noise and clutter of experience....He has become one of the few contemporary historians who are read as much for themselves as for their subjects."

-- Andrew Delbanco, New Republic

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