Reviews for The Golden Book of Springfield

The average rating for The Golden Book of Springfield based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-07-12 00:00:00 Kumar Srinivas This is a kind of difficult book to talk about because its thesis is so obvious that it goes without saying but then there's a whole 300 page book that does nothing more than provide examples of it. Forest of Time is basically a first-step corrective for the cultural genocide Native American methods of history have been subjected to by imperialists in the Western academy. It introduces dozens of little vignettes about historical techniques and modalities and academic commentary, grouped loosely into chapters but not in support for any particular argument, just with the message that: these are all things you probably didn't know about, and you should know about them, so here they are. It makes a fun, quick read and there's some neat stuff in here, from the growing consensus that a lot of communities have oral history that accurately describes ecological and geological events from many thousands of years ago, or early responses to writing that incorporate it as a kind of magic totem, or synthetic religious movements that bring shattered tribes into one community and form a millenarian narrative around the apocalypse wrought by settlers. It doesn't spend a lot of time on theoretical or epistemological questions of any sort, from relativism to accuracy or translation, but limits itself to just description, which is not exactly what I was expecting but still enjoyable enough that I'm glad I picked it up.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-10-21 00:00:00 Sandra Josephs This book is an informative bit of historiography. Nabokov discusses oral histories and Native American vs European concepts of historicity, and Native American history in material culture and place. Very dense and a bit dry in places, but still readable. Nabokov has some problems with awkward (uncomfortably paternalistic) word choice. He spends a lot of time discussing ethnographers who "collect" stories and "discover" things about modern Native cultures. A little awkward but still a good resource.