A collection of interviews in which Native Americans from the five largest southwestern Indian groups, the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles, recount the turmoil their tribes faced in the years between the Civil War and Oklahoma statehood.

The five largest southeastern Indian groups - the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles - were forced to emigrate west to the Indian territory (now Oklahoma) in the 1830s. Here, from WPA interviews, are those Indians' own stories of the troubled years between the Civil War and Oklahoma statehood - a period of extraordinary turmoil. During this period, Oklahoma Indians functioned autonomously, holding their own elections, enforcing their own laws, and creating their own society from a mixture of old Indian customs and the new ways of the whites. The WPA informants describe the economic realities of the era: a few wealthy Indians, the rest scraping a living out of subsistence farming, hunting, and fishing. They talk about education and religion - Native American and Christian - as well as diversions of the time: horse races, fairs, ball games, cornstalk shooting, and traditional ceremonies such as the Green Corn Dance.

How Nations Remember draws on multiple disciplines in the humanities and social sciences to examine how a nation's account of the past shapes its actions in the present. National memory can underwrite noble aspirations, but the volume focuses largely on how it contributes to the negative tendencies of nationalism that give rise to confrontation. Narratives are taken as units of analysis for examining the psychological and cultural dimensions of remembering particular events and also for understanding the schematic codes and mental habits that underlie national memory more generally. In this account, narratives are approached as tools that shape the views of members of national communities to such an extent that they serve as co-authors of what people say and think. Drawing on illustrations from Russia, China, Georgia, the United States, and elsewhere, the book examines how "narrative templates," "narrative dialogism," and "privileged event narratives" shape nations' views of themselves and their relations with others. The volume concludes with a list of ways to manage the disputes that pit one national community against another.

In May 2004, the sixtieth anniversary year of D-Day, the nation paid tribute to its World War II heroes with the dedication of a memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. This beautifully illustrated keepsake offers a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the memorial and its place in American history. Exclusive photographs show the memorial in all stages of development, accompanied by text exploring the symbolism of each part -- the Rainbow Pool, the Wall of Remembrance, the Field of Stars, the Freedom Wall, and the Pillars of the States and Territories. George H. W. Bush, former senator Bob Dole, Yogi Berra, and other veterans share their personal stories, and leading military historians contribute essays on the war efforts at home and abroad. Like the memorial it commemorates, this book pays tribute to the "greatest generation" -- the everyday Americans who rose up to defend our freedom.

On September 10, 1897, a group of 400 striking coal miners--workers of Polish, Slovak, and Lithuanian descent or origin--marched on Lattimer, Pennsylvania. There, law enforcement officers fired without warning into the protesters, killing nineteen miners and wounding thirty-eight others. The bloody day quickly faded into history. Paul A. Shackel confronts the legacies and lessons of the Lattimer event. Beginning with a dramatic retelling of the incident, Shackel traces how the violence, and the acquittal of the deputies who perpetrated it, spurred membership in the United Mine Workers. By blending archival and archaeological research with interviews, he weighs how the people living in the region remember--and forget--what happened. Now in positions of power, the descendants of the slain miners have themselves become rabidly anti-union and anti-immigrant as Dominicans and other Latinos change the community. Shackel shows how the social, economic, and political circumstances surrounding historic Lattimer connect in profound ways to the riven communities of today. Compelling and timely, Remembering Lattimer restores an American tragedy to our public memory.

Based on extensive ethnographic research in El Salvador, Spain, and the Dominican Republic, this book examines the contemporary effects of the violent legacies of the 20th century, exploring the manner in which engagement with significant public sites of memory results in challenges to dominant conceptions of the nation.