Dead certainties: unwarranted speculations

R$ 156,90

Sinopse

Simon Schama, the author of Landscape and Memory 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 storiesOn 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'.

Participantes

Autor: Simon Schama

Autor

SIMON SCHAMA

Simon Schama (1945, Londres, Reino Unido) é nome de destaque entre os historiadores contemporâneos. Formou-se em Cambridge, foi professor em Oxford e Harvard e atualmente dá aulas de história e história da arte na Universidade de Columbia. É autor de livros influentes, como Cidadãos (1989), um estudo da Revolução Francesa, O desconforto da riqueza (1987), sobre a Holanda, Paisagem e memória (1995), Rembrandt’s eyes (1999), entre outros. Tornou-se conhecido pelas séries, baseadas em seus livros, que produz e apresenta na emissora BBC, como A history of Britain (2000), que venceu o Broadcasting Press Guild Awards de 2001, e Simon Schama’s power of art (2006). Schama também publicou críticas na New Yorker e na New York Review of Books.