Dead Certainties : Unwarranted Speculations
By Simon SchamaBlending fact and fiction, document and imaginative reconstruction, this study of two true stories of violent death--each linked to a tragic Boston Brahmin family--explores the nature of history and how history is created
Like his The Embarrassment of Riches and the bestselling Citizens, Simon Schama's latest book is both history and literature of immense stylishness and ambition. But Dead Certainties goes beyond these more conventional histories to address the deeper enigmas that confront a student of the past. In order to do so, Schama reconstructs -- and at times reinvents -- two ambiguous deaths: the first, that of General James Wolfe at the battle of Quebec in 1759; the second, in 1849, that of George Parkman, an eccentric Boston brahmin whose murder by an impecunious Harvard professor in 1849 was a grisly reproach to the moral sanctity of his society. Out of these stories -- with all of their bizarre coincidences and contradictions -- Schama creates a dazzling and supremely vital work of historical imagination.
Book details
- Hardcover
- 333 pages
- English
- 0679402136
- 9780679402138
About Simon Schama
simon schama was born in 1945. the son of a textile merchant with lithuanian and turkish grandparents, he spent his early years in leigh-on-sea in essex. w Read More about Simon Schama
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