Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory (Critical Perspectives on the Past)

From Library Journal
In essays that previously appeared in the Radical History Review, Wallace (history, CUNY) explores the purposes of museums, particularly as popular tourist attractions. He is concerned with what the people who started museums originally had in mind to attract poor people and immigrants, for example, in the large urban technology museums and the early, mostly rural reconstructions such as Colonial Williamsburg. In his later chapters, Wallace deals with recent controversies such as the Enola Gay exhibit and Disney's America. He writes from a radical viewpoint in proposing the necessity of bringing people of color into museums; this is usually worn lightly but can become didactic. His style is lively and his musings productive, but the book's ideological focus (and, for the cloth edition, bloated price) make it a purchase only for libraries collecting heavily in curatorship or local history.?Fritz Alan Buckallew, Univ. of Central Oklahoma Lib., EdmondCopyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Midwest Book Review
Mickey Mouse History probes into the struggles over public memory and the trivialization of history that pervades American culture. The recent imbroglio surrounding the National Air and Space Museum's proposed Enola Gay exhibit was reported as centering on why the U. S. government decided to use the A-bomb against Japan. Mike Wallace scrutinizes the actual development of the exhibit and investigates the ways in which controversy drew in historians, veterans, the media and the general public. Whether his subject is multimillion-dollar theme parks owned by powerful corporations, urban museums, or television docudramas, Wallace shows how depictions of history are shaped by assumptions about which pasts are worth saving, whose stories are worth telling, what gets left, and who decides. Mickey Mouse History is emphatically recommended for anyone with an interest in how history gets written and transmitted to the general populace, the politics of history, and how contemporary events shape historical perceptions -- and how historical perceptions shaped contemporary events!


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In essays that previously appeared in the Radical History Review, Wallace (history, CUNY) explores the purposes of museums, particularly as popular tourist attractions. He is concerned with what the people who started museums originally had in mind to attract poor people and immigrants, for example, in the large urban technology museums and the early, mostly rural reconstructions such as Colonial Williamsburg. In his later chapters, Wallace deals with recent controversies such as the Enola Gay exhibit and Disney's America. He writes from a radical viewpoint in proposing the necessity of bringing people of color into museums; this is usually worn lightly but can become didactic. His style is lively and his musings productive, but the book's ideological focus (and, for the cloth edition, bloated price) make it a purchase only for libraries collecting heavily in curatorship or local history.Fritz Alan Buckallew, Univ. of Central Oklahoma Lib., Edmond


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