Publisher's Synopsis
In his foreword to 'Why do Ruling Classes Fear History?' and Other Questions, Daniel Singer says of Harvey Kaye, 'As a historian he addresses his fellows, urging them to teach their students and the general public that "the present is history and nothing is gained without struggle"; in other words, that the current power relations or institutions have been forged in the past and can be reshaped today and tomorrow.' Through essays that range in tone and content from the rhetorical power of a public address to the intimacy of a personal memoir, Harvey Kaye looks at the value of knowledge and the power of history to liberate. Not content to accept the notion that history is at an end and that individuals are powerless to effect change, Kaye makes an impassioned plea to understand the ongoing, circuitous route of history and its ability to engender social action at a time when society seems to have lost track of the true lessons that history can teach.
