About the Book
"All human beings are practicing historians," writes Gerda Lerner. "We live our lives; we tell our stories. It is as natural as breathing." It is as important as breathing, too. History shapes our self-definition and our relationship to community; it locates us in time and place and helps to give meaning to our lives. History can be the vital thread that holds a nation together, as demonstrated most strikingly in the case of Jewish history. Conversely, for women,
who have lived in a world in which they apparently had no history, its absence can be devastating. In Why History Matters, Lerner brings together her thinking and research of the last sixteen years,
combining personal reminiscences with innovative theory that illuminate the importance of history and the vital role women have played in it. Why History Matters contains some of the most significant thinking and writing on history that Lerner has done in her entire career--a summation of her life and work. The chapters are divided into three sections, each widely different from the others, each revelatory of Lerner as a woman and a feminist. We read first of Lerner's
coming to consciousness as a Jewish woman. There are moving accounts of her early life as a refugee in America, her return to Austria fifty years after fleeing the Nazis (to discover a nation remarkable both for
the absence of Jews and for the anti-Semitism just below the surface), her slow assimilation into American life, and her decision to be a historian. If the first section is personal, the second focuses on more professional concerns. Included here is a fascinating essay on nonviolent resistance, tracing the idea from the Quakers (such as Mary Dyer), to abolitionists such as Theodore Dwight Weld (the "most mobbed man" in America), to Thoreau's essay Civil Disobedience, then across the
sea to Tolstoy and Gandhi, before finally returning to America during the civil rights movement of the 1950s. There are insightful essays on "American Values" and on the tremendous advances women have made in the
twentieth century, as well as Lerner's presidential address to the Organization of American Historians, which outlines the contributions of women to the field of history and the growing importance of women as a subject of history. The highlight of the final section of the book is Lerner's bold and innovative look at the issues of class and race as they relate to women, an essay that distills her thinking on these difficult subjects and offers a coherent conceptual framework that will prove of
lasting interest to historians and intellectuals. A major figure in women's studies and long-term activist for women's issues, a founding member of NOW and a past president of the
Organization of American Historians, Gerda Lerner is a pioneer in the field of Women's History and one of its leading practitioners. Why History Matters is the summation of the work and thinking of this distinguished historian.
About the Author :
Gerda Lerner is Robinson-Edwards Professor of History, Emerita, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Review :
"There can be no doubting the deep thoughtfulness that informs [Lerners] every page. And expressing this attitude is a firm, forceful, utterly clear and unpretentious voice. Lerner has set a standard that few of her fellow scholars will ever match."--John Demos, The New York Times Book Review
"The peace-seeking warrior's summation of what is worth fighting for....Lerner argues lucidly, energetically, and with authority....Once again, her history-making rings out to urge, to cajole, to bring us our past in order to bring us to our senses and sweeter powers."--Catharine R. Stimpson, The Nation
"An important, insightful, easy-to-read collection"--Booklist
"This moving collection of essays is testimony--if more were needed--to the breadth of Gerda Lerner's spirit and her humane wisdom."--Linda k. Kerber, co-editor of U.S. History as Women's History: New Feminist Essays
"Gerda Lerner brings us to the moral Grand Divides of history, then quietly explains where she sees humankind having been, and where, with rational unity, we might yet go. I was fascinated reading Professor Lerner's account of her own disciplined struggle not to hate Germans today for the genocide of European Jewry. She makes it very clear the process is important and on-going."--Alan Adelson, Executive Director, The Jewish Heritage Project
"With her customary brilliance and clarity, Gerda Lerner offers us her own story and in the process explains how history happens, is interpreted, utilized, transmuted into meaning and memory, and denied and distorted by those with the power to do so. This book is a gift to all who hope to understand the role of the past in the present..."--Letty Cottin Pogrebin
"Now more than ever, readers of history need such lucid critical minds as Lerner's, and this collection is therefore especially welcome."--Publisher's Weekly
"This is food for thought for anyone who likes to ponder where we are, how we got there, and what makes transformation possible."--The Boston Globe
"Why History Matters is the peace-seeking warrior's summation of what is worth fighting for: what kind of America, what kind of feminism, what kind of history-making, what kind of future. Lerner argues lucidly, energetically, and with authority. Each paragraph is like a stone in a well-constructed bell tower or watch-tower. Once again, her history-making rings out to urge, to cajole, to bring us our past in order to bring us to our senses and sweeter
powers."--Catherine R. Stimpson, The Nation
"Everything Gerda Lerner says matters....Her sensitivity and her scholarship shine in essays arguing that class, gender, and race are social constructs--damaging inventions that contemporary thought is trying to dismantle."--The New Yorker
