How the Past Is a Foreign Country
As
a product of the 20th century who finds himself deep into the 21st,
I know a little about temporal dislocation. Whether it’s the politics, the
music, or adjusting to casual swearing, mobile texting, or calorie-count signs
at McDonalds, it’s like my head is in then;
my body in now.
Imagine
trying to make sense of a time that exists entirely outside living memory. This
is the challenge Robert Darnton takes on in this collection of
historical-anthropological essays looking back at 18th century
France.
