Narrating our pasts: The social construction of oral history

Tonkin treats a complex and timely set of ideas when she studies the relationships between oracy and literacy, oral narrative performance and written texts, memory and history and society. To discuss these areas of scholarly debate, she employs a multidisciplinary, sometimes contentious variety of studies and assertions.

The Lion's Gate

It is easy to see why Steven Pressfield was drawn to the story of the Israeli victory over the combined armies of the Arab countries in the Six-Day War of 1967. Pressfield is best known for GATES OF FIRE, the classic exposition of the Spartan warriors at the gates of Thermopylae, but he is also the author of THE WAR OF ART, in which he develops and shares his theory of Resistance.

The Coup

In August 1953, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated the swift overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader and installed Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in his place. Over the next twenty-six years, the United States backed the unpopular, authoritarian shah and his secret police; in exchange, it reaped a share of Iran’s oil wealth and became a key player in this volatile region. The blowback was almost inevitable, as this new and revealing history of the coup and its consequences shows. When the 1979 Iranian Revolution deposed the shah and replaced his puppet government with a radical Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the shift reverberated throughout the Middle East and the world, casting a long, dark shadow over U.S.-Iran relations that extends to the present day.

Days of Revolution

Outside of Shiraz in the Fars Province of southwestern Iran lies "Aliabad." Mary Hegland arrived in this then-small agricultural village of several thousand people in the summer of 1978, unaware of the momentous changes that would sweep this town and this country in the months ahead. She became the only American researcher to witness the Islamic Revolution firsthand over her eighteen-month stay. Days of Revolution offers an insider's view of how regular people were drawn into, experienced, and influenced the 1979 Revolution and its aftermath.

Bukhara Magazine Features Anjavi Shirazi

The latest issue of Bukhara magazine pertaining to Abolqasem Anjavi Shirazi, Persian literary researcher, has been published. IBNA: According to Iran Daily, the ‘Literary Criticism’ section of the 97th issue of the magazine includes writings by Mohammadreza Shafiei Kadkani, Persian writer, poet and literary critic and Taqi Pournamdarian, Persian literary researcher, ISNA reported. Also two written pieces from Mostafa Mohaqeq Damad and Houshang Dowlatabadi were included in the ‘Islamic Philosophy’ and ‘Text Research’ sections of the magazine respectively.

Review: Soviet Families' Inner Lives

How did Stalin’s terror shape “the inner world of ordinary Soviet citizens” (xxix)? To answer this question, the British historian Orlando Figes organized a team of researchers who interviewed Russians about life since the Revolution. They also collected their personal documents and created several archives and a website (http://www.orlandofiges.com), which serve as extensions of Figes’s book. The “moral sphere of the family” (xxx) is the focus of Figes’s 700-page-narrative. In this sweeping exploration, he masterfully handles a massive number of sources as he constructs a complex history of myriad psychic, emotional, intellectual, social, and cultural changes over the course of nearly a century. The thrust of this compelling and often tragic story of families’ everyday lives in Stalinist Russia derives from hundreds of testimonies that have survived through letters, photographs, diaries, memoirs, oral histories, and many other personal or socalled ego-documents. The result is a history of Soviet society’s mentalité in the longue durée.

Review: Duty

Greg Jaffe covered the Pentagon for The Washington Post and is a co-author of “The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army.” Maybe it was the time of year, just before the Christmas holidays. Maybe it was the setting — a bare-bones combat outpost in the violent mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Maybe it was the strain of more than four years of signing deployment orders that he knew would lead to the deaths of more young Americans. But in December 2010, speaking to troops clustered around him, Robert M. Gates was overcome by an uncharacteristic flood of emotion.

With photos and oral history, a new book

With photos and oral history, a new book portrays Roberto Clemente mostly through the eyes of his family. "There was so much pressure being Roberto Clemente, at that moment, I didn't want to be Roberto Clemente."

ANZAC Memories

Anzac Memories was first published to acclaim in 1994, and has achieved international renown for its pioneering contribution to the study of oral history and war memory. Michael McKernan wrote that the book gave ‘as good a picture of the impact of the Great war on individuals and Australia as we are likely to get in this generation’. Ian McGibbon concluded that 'anyone interested in the limitations and potentialities of oral testimony will find Anzac Memories an absorbing study'.

Oral History, Community, and Work in the American West

Nurses, show girls, housewives, farm workers, casino managers, and government inspectors—together these hard-working members of society contributed to the development of towns across the West. The Essays in this volume show how oral history increases understanding of work and community in the twentieth century American West.