History and Memory (Historical Approaches) by Geoffrey Cubitt (2007) Paperback

by Geoffrey Cubitt

Excellent Book

Genres: History, Sociology

Paperback

First published November 1, 2007

Reviews

[Victoria (Eve's Alexandria) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't recorded PhD related reading on Goodreads up to now, but have decided to change to include books that I have read cover to cover. After all, these take up a significant amount of my reading time!

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in getting an overview of memory theory as it relates to history and understanding the past. It isn't light reading by any means - Geoff writes dense, multi-clause prose - and took me ages to work through. But it's the best synthesis of the last 30 years of academic thinking on the subject I've read (and I've read quite a few), and is particularly interesting about how memory is externalised into culture. A bit repetitive at times, as another reviewer has noted, but I think that's necessary given the complexity of the ideas under discussion.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

super dense, but pretty interesting. particularly insightful discussion of oral/written history transmission and collective/social memory. a little repetitive at times, maybe. lots of good ideas though - i found myself typing paragraphs worth of quotes from this book to think about later.

[Starbubbles · Rating 3 out of 5]

very dense read, but very interesting material. but that's what you get when you read about memory theory.

[talia · Rating 3 out of 5]

ok so this was a Very interesting book that im actually super glad I read and I learned a lot. some issues:

-the man uses the word 'obviously' on Every. Fucking. Page. i hate it so much. its stuck up and if the thing was obvious (it never was), you shouldnt be writing the sentence in the first place
-a lot of fancy writing for no particular purpose. i get if its the only way to say the thing you need to say but this guys went overboard. its not that serious. a lot of the time i understood the concept at 10 years old but he just wanted to make it seem cool and original and so he used big words. unnecessary.

besides that, there was a lot i didnt know and the examples he used were super interesting so yeah. cool cool cool

[Fresno Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

thought provoking, but dense

[˗ˏˋ n o v i ˎˊ˗ · Rating 2 out of 5]

2025, 2 stars. Read for university.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clear, well organized. A great place to start on ideas of memory in the study of history!