Adventures of a Postmodern Historian: Living and Writing the Past - Softcover

Just what is this thing called history? If you have ever wanted to know then this book is essential reading. Robert A. Rosenstone - novelist and experimental historian -- explains what it is in this fascinating personal account of his travels through time. His takes on life and philosophy offers a brilliantly illuminating insight into how we all voyage through time and places. As he says `History does not exist until it is created'. This is a book that should be read if you want to understand your journey through time. * Alun Munslow, UK Editor of 'Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice' * This is an entertaining and instructive account of how one historian assesses his own intellectual development within the wider cultural context of his time. Robert Rosenstone describes how his experiences in Franco's Spain, Soviet Russia, Japan, and Hollywood affected his views on historians' treatment of the past, and his engaging style should help clarify for readers the fundamental historiographical developments of the last half-century. * Beverley Southgate, University of Hertfordshire * Adventures of a Postmodern Historian is truly one of a kind, at once an account of Rosenstone's intellectual journey and an incisive look at the way the profession of history and ideas about academic historical writing have evolved over the past five decades. The style of this text-part memoir, part a recounting of his experiences conducting research in Spain, the Soviet Union and Japan-reflects Rosenstone's project of theorizing the affective relationship between the historian and his or her object of inquiry. "The fingerprints of our minds, souls and ideology," he writes, "are all over our pages." Rosenstone is a brilliant writer. His conversational tone is captivating, conjuring up for instance, the image of a never-ending dinner in Leningrad in which virtually no food (but plenty of vodka) was served, or a confrontation, as a visiting professor, with a Japanese Program Head over his refusal to give his students a final exam. Intellectually and geographically far-reaching, this book is in every sense an adventure. * Alison Landsberg, George Mason University, USA * Hundreds of historians have written memoirs. I promise only that you have not read one as lively or revealing as Robert Rosenstone's. Much has changed since the 1960s, when Rosenstone happened upon history. What remains is his honesty, irreverence, passion, cosmopolitanism, and wit, all of which makes him a great writer and ideal guide to the discipline and our time. * James Goodman, Rutgers University, USA * In the course of his career, Robert A. Rosenstone (emeritus, Cal Tech) has worked as one of the most brilliantly innovative historians in the United States. ... His latest book Adventures of a Postmodern Historian is a beautifully written memoir that succeeds in being a profound meditation on the life of a historian as well as the nature of historical research and writing. It is also a highly entertaining and moving account of his unique and interesting career. * History News Network *

Robert Rosenstone was among the first `postmodern' historians, and remains one of the most renowned. In this honest, revealing and often funny memoir, he shows us how he got there and why. Adventures of a Postmodern Historian chronicles Rosenstone's research journeys over half a century. Beginning in the 1960s, his offbeat trajectory took him on adventures through the police states of Franco Spain and the Soviet Union, to the Shinto shrines and Zen temples of Japan and ultimately to Hollywood. Alongside his own memoirs, Rosenstone reflects upon developments and changes within the realm of professional history, which in turn reflect the social, cultural, and intellectual shifts of the late 20th century. A pioneer of experimental and creative history, he suggests how the experience of the historian can inflect the written history, and provides a defence of innovation in historical writing that is both intellectually rigorous and entertaining. In doing so he offers a window into the state of history today - and points to exciting new ways of writing the past. This is a book about the craft of history, about both doing research and writing it. It should be required reading for all historians.