The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History, Margaret MacMillan

Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History

Margaret MacMillan

Acclaimed historian Margaret MacMillan explores here the many ways in which history affects us all. She shows how a deeper engagement with history, both as individuals and in the sphere of public debate, can help us understand ourselves and the world better. But she also warns that history can be misused and lead to misunderstanding. History is used to justify religious movements and political campaigns alike. Dictators may suppress history because it undermines their ideas, agendas, or claims to absolute authority. Nationalists may tell false, one-sided, or misleading stories about the past. Political leaders might mobilize their people by telling lies. It is imperative that we have an understanding of the past and avoid these and other common traps in thinking to which many fall prey. This brilliantly reasoned work, alive with incident and figures both great and infamous, will compel us to examine history anew--and skillfully illuminates why it is important to treat the past with care.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
  • Publish Date: Jul 13rd, 2010
  • Pages: 208
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.08in - 5.22in - 0.54in - 0.39lb
  • EAN: 9780812979961
  • Categories: • Historiography• History & Theory - General• Reference

More books to explore

Book Cover for: Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past, Richard Cohen
Book Cover for: Recognition, Axel Honneth
Book Cover for: Animal Spirits: The American Pursuit of Vitality from Camp Meeting to Wall Street, Jackson Lears
Book Cover for: The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, Francis Fukuyama
Book Cover for: Power, Pleasure, and Profit: Insatiable Appetites from Machiavelli to Madison, David Wootton
Book Cover for: American History Now, Eric Foner
Book Cover for: A History of Cookbooks: From Kitchen to Page Over Seven Centuries Volume 64, Henry Notaker
Book Cover for: A History of Cookbooks: From Kitchen to Page Over Seven Centuries Volume 64, Henry Notaker
Book Cover for: To America: Personal Reflections of an Historian, Stephen E. Ambrose
Book Cover for: Truth Has a Power of Its Own: Conversations about a People's History, Howard Zinn
Book Cover for: Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants, James Vincent
Book Cover for: Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants, James Vincent
Book Cover for: The World: A Family History of Humanity, Simon Sebag Montefiore
Book Cover for: Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History, Peter Brown
Book Cover for: Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?, Graham Allison

About the Author

Margaret MacMillan is the author of Paris 1919, Nixon and Mao, and Women of the Raj. Paris 1919 won the Duff Cooper Prize, the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction, the Hessell-Tiltman Prize for History, a Silver Medal for the Arthur Ross Book Award of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Governor-General's prize for nonfiction, and it was selected by the editors of The New York Times as one of the ten best books of the year. A past provost of Trinity College at the University of Toronto, MacMillan is the warden of St. Antony's College at Oxford University.

More books by Margaret MacMillan

Book Cover for: Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, Margaret MacMillan
Book Cover for: War: How Conflict Shaped Us, Margaret MacMillan
Book Cover for: Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World, Margaret MacMillan
Book Cover for: Women of the Raj: The Mothers, Wives, and Daughters of the British Empire in India, Margaret MacMillan
Book Cover for: The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914, Margaret MacMillan
Book Cover for: History's People: Personalities and the Past, Margaret MacMillan

Praise for this book

"Reminds readers that history matters . . . This is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the importance of correctly understanding the past."--Publishers Weekly, starred review