Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / AASLH
Pages: 164
•
Trim: 7⅜ x 10¼
978-1-4422-6367-3 • Hardback • August 2016 • $97.00 • (£75.00)
978-1-4422-6368-0 • Paperback • August 2016 • $40.00 • (£30.00)
978-1-4422-6369-7 • eBook • August 2016 • $38.00 • (£30.00)
Dr. Benjamin Hruska is a history instructor at Basis International School in Shenzhen, China. Before this he served as the court historian for the Department of Defense’s U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces in Washington, D.C. He completed his PhD in Public History at Arizona State University in 2012 and his dissertation focused on the actions of self-commemoration by U.S. Navy veterans in World War II. Before graduate school he served as the Executive Director of a small maritime museum, the Block Island Historical Society on Block Island, Rhode Island. He earned an M.A. in Public History from Wichita State University in 2004 and a B.A. in History from Pittsburg State University in 2000.
PREFACE
CHAPTER
1LEAVING PORT: AN INTRODUCTION
2COMEMORATION
3OBJECTS
4EXHIBTIONS
5PUBLIC MEMORIALS
6ENTERING PORT: CONCLUSION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INDEX
Hruska has produced an informative book filled with interesting case studies from around the world that reveals just how diverse and innovative interpretations of naval history can be. Overall, the book will be most valuable to public historians and those interested in working in museums. It can also serve as a valuable text for anyone interested in examining historical memory and memorialization in a naval context.
— H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online
At war with the dispersing seas of time, Benjamin Hruska provides a rich example-filled and exploratory guide to thinking and commemorating contemporary maritime history. His audience encompasses not just museum keepers and exhibition designers, politicians and historians, but individual sailors, families, friends and companions who seek to remember, honor, and narrate their heroes and dead. Keenly aware how fragile the threading kick of memory and the very vessels, objects, and agencies of remembrance— sailors, ships, navies, and nations themselves—Hruska passionately seeks the objects, mediums, and agencies that furnish platforms for remembering maritime lives, events, and fates. He draws his examples of successful display not just from preeminent contemporary maritime powers like Great Britain and the United States but other nations and groups that have reason to remember, honor, and narrate wars, commerce, and adventures that risked life and fortunes in the swells of water and time.
— Joseph A. Amato, Professor Emeritus, Southwest Minnesota State University and Author of Everyday Life: How the Ordinary Became Extraordinary
Public historians engaged in presenting and interpreting naval history should have this book on their shelves for both information and inspiration. And other individuals with just a general interest in the art and craft of interpreting the American past will also find this book surprisingly relevant. Narratives of salt and fresh water history and the places that interpret them, Ben Hruska shows, have significance for us all in ways we have never imagined.
— Dennis A. O'Toole, Ph.D., Co-founder, Cañada Alamosa Institute