Reviews
‘Perceptive and provocative … explores the many perversities of the heritage cult - and its absolute irresistibility.’Michael Kerrigan, The Scotsman, "The Heritage Crusade and The Past Is a Foreign Country together provide the intellectual underpinning and wider context that any understanding of preservation as meaning and direction requires." Robert Wilson, Preservation (US National Trust), 'The invention of heritage is a fascinating story, and Lowenthal tells it with vigour, style and a Balzacian relish for detail ... His racy style keeps us constantly on the move.' Roger Scruton, The Times, "The many writings of David Lowenthal have been helpful to those anxious to sort out the legitimate from the spurious in the twentieth century western preoccupations with organized history and heritage...In publishing ^The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History, Mr. Lowenthal has taken us further down this road and on this excursion he takes time to guide us along several interesting and unexpected detours." Manitoba History, Graham MacDonald, Calgary, Alberta, "David Lowenthal knows more about the uses and abuses of the past than anyone I know of...The book is filled with fascinating examples of claims and counterclaims made in the name of heritage...There is much in Lowenthal's account that is entertaining, even downright comical. But the author's message is deeply serious, for he warns us that a faith in heritage can produce murderous fanaticism." John R. Gillis, Reviews in American History, 'The invention of heritage is a fascinating story, and Lowenthal tells it with vigour, style and a Balzacian relish for detail … His racy style keeps us constantly on the move.' Roger Scruton, The Times, ‘Leads a brilliant dance through this jungle of cultural confusion, from the Holocaust Museum to Elvis Presley’s shrine in Graceland.’Candida Lycett Green, The Sunday Express, "The best book I have read on historic preservation, by the way, is The heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History, by David Lowenthal..." WoodenBoat, "...[Lowenthal] is an alert and indefatigable snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. Cheerfully jaundiced, exuberantly glum, he shuffles a kaleidoscope of quotation and comment on every aspect of the heritage phenomenon: books, magazines, newspapers, jokes, anecdotes, and personal experience." Richard Jenkyns, New York Review of Books, "Timely and provocative...brilliant and stimulating pyrotechnic...everything from the Pilgrim Fathers to the Inuits, from Homer's Greece to the rainforests of Brazil...Such an all-embracing approach is commendable and reveals a polymathic mind." Roy Strong, The Sunday Times, 'Perceptive and provocative ... explores the many perversities of the heritage cult - and its absolute irresistibility.' Michael Kerrigan, The Scotsman, "...a major literary achievement....Eschewing model-building for the well-chosen example and literature for social science, Lowenthal has crafted a book that will excite readers of the New York Review of Books as well as those of the Annals...Geographers, no less than historians, ignore it at their peril." Steven Hoelscher, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 1997, ‘The invention of heritage is a fascinating story, and Lowenthal tells it with vigour, style and a Balzacian relish for detail … His racy style keeps us constantly on the move.’Roger Scruton, The Times, 'Leads a brilliant dance through this jungle of cultural confusion, from the Holocaust Museum to Elvis Presley's shrine in Graceland.' Candida Lycett Green, The Sunday Express, 'Perceptive and provocative … explores the many perversities of the heritage cult - and its absolute irresistibility.' Michael Kerrigan, The Scotsman
