3/18/19
In the age of distraction, one small publisher keeps local history alive in sepia tones
Historians in the Newstags: books, publishing, local history
In a novel called “Requiem for a Nun,” William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” But William Faulkner is dead, and nobody reads “Requiem for a Nun.”
Which is just part of the problem.
In this age of rising mobility, giddy gentrification and shrinking attention spans, historical amnesia spreads like an epidemic: It may be asymptomatic for years, but eventually it’s fatal to our respect for bygone days. It would be nice, actually, if those who don’t remember the past were condemned to repeat it; in most cases, they’re just doomed to forget it.
Ironically, the Web, that infinite repository, may exacerbate our sense of alienation from the history all around us. Not only does the Internet lure us to distant places, but it also draws our eyes away from the storied sites and crumbling buildings we pass every day while tripping along the street staring at our phones.
For more than two decades, one small publisher far from New York has been quietly rescuing remnants of history from the flames of oblivion. You may have seen the trim, sepia-toned books from Arcadia Publishing or its imprint the History Press. From an office in Mount Pleasant, S.C., Arcadia releases almost 500 new titles a year. They’re available in bookstores, but you’re more likely to have noticed them in history museums, parks, diners, hardware stores and beauty parlors in small towns throughout America.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- Josh Hawley Earns F in Early American History
- Does Germany's Holocaust Education Give Cover to Nativism?
- "Car Brain" Has Long Normalized Carnage on the Roads
- Hawley's Use of Fake Patrick Henry Quote a Revealing Error
- Health Researchers Show Segregation 100 Years Ago Harmed Black Health, and Effects Continue Today
- Nelson Lichtenstein on a Half Century of Labor History
- Can America Handle a 250th Anniversary?
- New Research Shows British Industrialization Drew Ironworking Methods from Colonized and Enslaved Jamaicans
- The American Revolution Remains a Hotly Contested Symbolic Field
- Untangling Fact and Fiction in the Story of a Nazi-Era Brothel