The Faber Book of Reportage

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Made up of nearly three hundred contemporaneous accounts, Eyewitness to History gives a truly fascinating insight into what people were thinking in the moment while experiencing those events from the past 2500 years that we still talk about today. Edited by Oxford professor and renowned literary critic John Carey, and initially released in 1987, my only complaint would be that these accounts are overwhelmingly written by white men – too often recounting battle scenes that failed to engage me – but I understand that this reflects the interests of the book's editor and the ethos of its time; I wouldn't want this book itself to be changed but I would be interested in reading other books of this type with more varied points-of-view. Thoroughly valuable romp through history, as recorded by the folks who were there to witness it. A used book that does show some small signs of wear - but no tears - on either binding or paper. Very good items should not have writing or highlighting.

The Faber Book of Reportage Paperback - 1996 - Biblio The Faber Book of Reportage Paperback - 1996 - Biblio

A true five-star masterpiece that collects hundreds of eyewitness accounts of important historical events from the age of antiquity to the overthrow of Marcos. A perfect book for anyone interested in history and the humanities. Carl Sagan’s quote “Books permit us to voyage through time, to tap the wisdom of our ancestors” is absolutely true in this case. There really should be many more volumes to this collection.

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The author, Samuel Gridley Howe, was a leading America educator, and a pioneer in the education of blind and handicapped children. This book is a collection of primary sources for more than 24 centuries of historical events. It is very good, but definitely uneven, and that's why it doesn't get a higher rating. I think anyone who is serious about studying history or more important BEING an historian needs to read this. Reading primary sources like this is good training—it allows one to see things through different perspectives and worldviews. A suffragette (the Lady Constance Lytton, disguised as a lower-class woman) is force-fed during a hunger strike in Walton Gaol in 1910: Laying in her own vomit afterwards, exhausted and “quite helpless”, Lytton writes, “Before long I heard the sounds of the forced feeding in the next cell to mine. It was almost more than I could bear, it was Elaine Howey, I was sure. When the ghastly process was all over and all quiet, I tapped on the wall and called out at the top of my voice, which wasn't much just then, 'No surrender,' and there came the answer past any doubt in Elaine's voice, 'No surrender.'" This observation by Amerigo Vespucci is an example. He assumes that war has causes that he is familiar with. The concept that maybe war is an innate part of human essence is alien to him. It is history these accounts offer, but history deprived of generalizations. The writers are strangers to omniscience. The varnish of interpretation has been removed so we can see people clearly, as they originally were – gazing incredulously at what was, for that moment, the newest thing that had ever happened to them.

Faber Book of Reportage: Books - AbeBooks Faber Book of Reportage: Books - AbeBooks

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urn:lcp:faberbookofrepor0000unse:epub:eab9de26-4d39-493b-a835-479082ae68e5 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier faberbookofrepor0000unse Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2b50h36n72 Invoice 1652 Isbn 0571141633 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9783 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-2000516 Openlibrary_edition And there were so many fascinating literary references, as with the open-air cremation of Percy Shelley, written by Edward John Trelawny in 1822: “The only portions that were not consumed were some fragments of bones, the jaw, and the skull, but what surprised us all, was that the heart remained entire. In snatching this relic from the fiery furnace, my hand was severely burnt; and had anyone seen me do the act I should have been put into quarantine.” The abandonment of the Gallipoli Campaign brought about the resignation of Churchill, the chief supporter of the venture. The format of the book, entirely first-hand accounts with sometimes a bit of contextual information, is something I haven't read before, and it was very refreshing. There is something much more tangible and alive about a first-hand account of an event, rather than the somewhat dry accounts found in most history books. The span of the events, from something like 400 BC to 1986 AD, allows one to reflect on human history as a whole, rather than focusing on a specific period of time. It's quite a hefty book and well, not literally everything interested me (descriptions of battles, no matter who's doing the describing, tend to bore me to tears, so i skipped those), but it was still an otherwise quite engrossing volume.