Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / AASLH
Pages: 232
•
Trim: 6¾ x 9
978-0-7591-0288-0 • Paperback • May 2004 • $50.00 • (£38.00)
978-0-7591-1563-7 • eBook • May 2004 • $47.00 • (£36.00)
Since 1988 Robert R. Archibald has been president and CEO of the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis, Missouri. An active member of many professional and community organizations and author of A Place to Remember: Using History to Build Community (AltaMira 1999), he writes and speaks on numerous topics from history and historical practice to community building and environmental responsibility.
1 Acknowledgments 2 Introduction: The Past as Context 3
Chapter 1: Creating a Place 4
Chapter 2: The Power of Place 5
Chapter 3: Sharing the Story 6
Chapter 4: Making Connections 7
Chapter 5: Contemplating Change 8
Chapter 6: The Call of Wildness 9
Chapter 7: Sustaining the Future 10
Chapter 8: Touring a Culture 11
Chapter 9: A Wonderful Place 12
Chapter 10: Under Construction 13 Index 14 About the Author
Bob Archibald's book is beautifully and passionately written. His is a life profoundly rooted in place: the stark beauty of Michigan's upper peninsula, the evocative landscape of the southwest, the open skies of Montana, and the urban landscape of St. Louis. He discovers stories everywhere: in graveyards, old homes, open air markets, old bridges, an African-American hospital, the death mask of an infant, and an Alaskan train ride. Archibald believes that public history can help repair our connections withplace and revitalize communities. In a dark time, his is a welcome voice...
— Edward T. Linenthal
Bob Archibald has the ability to put into words the feelings, inclinations, fears, and joys about community that so many of us share but cannot express. In The New Town Square his examples of those expressions make me actually 'see' the issues froman entirely different perspective....
— Terry Davis
This is an elegantly written book with a clear theme. American who have grown up in the suburbs may reject Archibald's characterization of their neighborhoods as identical and stifling places that lack a sense of community. However, Archibald raises important points about the evolving nature of American society and about the place of history amid rapid change, and readers will benefit from this thought-provoking volume....
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In this compassionate masterpiece of reflection and clear writing, Bob Archibald offers thoughtful insights into the past, our sense of place and identification, the ways in which we think about our environment and about wilderness, as ways to deal well with the present and the future. His book is an inspiration, a call to recognize that there is more to civilization than individual consumption, and an invitation to join in rebuilding the values on which our lives are ultimately based, in order to live dignified lives worthy of the privileges we enjoy. It must be a source of inspiration to any thoughtful person...
— Peter H. Raven
This is a good book, most of all, because it relates one man's varied involvements in his community and profession as object lessons for peers and career aspirants. For Archibald, museums and historical agencies are not places in which historians and curators are to sequester themselves?as was once accepted and expected?like monks in a monastery. Rather, they must be at the center of their communities, as members of a profession who both hold and tell the stories that articulate and sustain their fellow citizens' identity. It is an awesome responsibility, for which Archibald has been a most outspoken, ardent, and eloquent advocate. . . The concluding chapter, Under Construction, ought to be required reading for every historical society and museum staffand board member in the country..
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