At once memoir and meditation, Keeping Time records one professional historian's struggle to live in history even as he studies it, writes about it, and teaches it. Exploring the omnipresence of the past in American life today, Peter N. Carroll weaves into his autobiographical narrative a wealth of provocative observations on the practice of history, the connections between "small" lives and large forces, and the relationship of personal choice to public activity.
Carroll feels compelled to view the past in a different way-not as something remote from the present, but as a vital current in everyone's life. He strives to popularize history, reminding us that the particulars of ordinary life are indeed historical, that all human beings, however "obscure" or "important," exist in time, and that each must live in history.
- ISBN13 9780820337920
- Publish Date 1 November 2010 (first published 1 March 1990)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Georgia Press
- Format Paperback
- Pages 224
- Language English