Creating Colonial Williamsburg

by GREENSPAN A

Thousands of people each year experience life in eighteenth-century Virginia by visiting Colonial Williamsburg, one of America's premier historical restorations. That is not what the founders had in mind when they opened this museum in 1932. Their aim was to build a shrine to promote American valuesæindividualism, democracy, and representative governmentæat a time when they felt these beliefs were being eroded. As Anders Greenspan demonstrates in this lucid analysis, Colonial Williamsburg's evolving presentation of history offers an excellent means of understanding many social and political changes in twentieth-century America.

Genres: History, American History

224 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2002

Reviews

[Nigel Ewan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking for a book about the history of the Colonial Williamsburg project that didn’t have the organization’s imprimatur, and I got it here. But, sheesh, this guy really hates Colonial Williamsburg! Maybe they caused his girlfriend to break up with him or something? Some parts literally made me laugh out loud due to the slanted and tone-deaf descriptions. If you can get past the snide judgementalism, it’s an interesting read.

[Nicole Brown · Rating 1 out of 5]

The bias of this author is astoundingly apparent and the information reads as if it was written almost 50 years before it’s publication.

[Mackenzie Brooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prep for the public history class I'm teaching in the spring.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a page turner but it reads well and is very informative and well researched.

[Anna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm sorry to say, this book was pretty terrible. The author repeats himself so much that I'm pretty sure the length could be cut in half without losing any content. Almost every page was filled with quotations from the Rockefeller archives, and there's very little sense of continuity to the timeline. The last chapter sounds like he got a kickback from CW and mostly regurgitated information from the website. I did learn some interesting information, but it was too few and far between to really recommend this book. It's a bummer because I really wanted to like this!

[Marti · Rating 2 out of 5]

Academically, there is a lot of material in this book, but as others have said, much of it is repetitive. I enjoyed skimming through it, though, and looking at the photos that were included. In all, it read like separate essays, many of which held the same information.

[Susanna - Censored by GoodReads · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but if he didn't use every letter he read in the Rockefeller archives, I couldn't tell it.

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible