What Nostalgia Was

2018-01-05 History

Author : Thomas Dodman
Release : 2018-01-05
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 94X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis What Nostalgia Was by : Thomas Dodman

Download or read book What Nostalgia Was written by Thomas Dodman. This book was released on 2018-01-05. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In What Nostalgia Was, historian Thomas Dodman traces the history of clinical "nostalgia" from when it was first coined in 1688 to describe deadly homesickness until the late nineteenth century, when it morphed into the benign yearning for a lost past we are all familiar with today. Dodman explores how people, both doctors and sufferers, understood nostalgia in late seventeenth-century Swiss cantons (where the first cases were reported) to the Napoleonic wars and to the French colonization of North Africa in the latter 1800s. A work of transnational scope over the longue duree, the book is an intellectual biography of a "transient mental illness" that was successively reframed according to prevailing notions of medicine, romanticism, and climatic and racial determinism. At the same time, Dodman adopts an ethnographic sensitivity to understand the everyday experience of living with nostalgia. In so doing, he explains why nostalgia was such a compelling diagnosis for war neuroses and generalized socioemotional disembeddedness at the dawn of the capitalist era and how it can be understood as a powerful bellwether of the psychological effects of living in the modern age.

On Nostalgia

2020-07-21 Social Science

Author : David Berry
Release : 2020-07-21
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 236/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis On Nostalgia by : David Berry

Download or read book On Nostalgia written by David Berry. This book was released on 2020-07-21. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Mad Men to MAGA: how nostalgia came to be and why we are so eager to indulge it. From movies to politics, social media posts to the targeted ads between them, nostalgia is one of the most potent forces of our era. On Nostalgia is a panoramic cultural history of nostalgia, exploring how a force that started as a psychological diagnosis of soldiers fighting far from home has come become a quintessentially modern condition. Drawing on everything from the modern science of memory to the romantic ideals of advertising, and traversing cultural movements from futurism to fascism to Facebook, cultural critic David Berry examines how the relentless search for self and overwhelming presence of mass media stokes the fires of nostalgia, making it as inescapable as it is hard to pin down. Holding fast against the pull of the past while trying to understand what makes the fundamental impossibility of return so appealing, On Nostalgia explores what it means to remember, how the universal yearning is used by us and against us, and it considers a future where the past is more readily available and easier to lose track of than ever before. "If nostalgia was a disease in the Good Old Days, then David Berry's cogently argued, intelligent, and witty book should be prescribed reading for anyone wishing to understand what sometimes feels like a peculiarly virulent epidemic of our current times." —Travis Elborough "We're so lucky to have a writer as thoughtful, funny, smart, and cutting as David Berry. Nostalgia dictates so much of our world, and there isn't a better cataloger, critic, and guide through it than Berry." —Scaachi Koul

The Future of Nostalgia

2008-08-05 Biography & Autobiography

Author : Svetlana Boym
Release : 2008-08-05
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 870/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Future of Nostalgia by : Svetlana Boym

Download or read book The Future of Nostalgia written by Svetlana Boym. This book was released on 2008-08-05. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can one be nostalgic for the home one never had? Why is it that the age of globalization is accompanied by a no less global epidemic of nostalgia? Can we know what we are nostalgic for? In the seventeenth century, Swiss doctors believed that opium, leeches, and a trek through the Alps would cure nostalgia. In 1733 a Russian commander, disgusted with the debilitating homesickness rampant among his troops, buried a soldier alive as a deterrent to nostalgia. In her new book, Svetlana Boym develops a comprehensive approach to this elusive ailment. Combining personal memoir, philosophical essay, and historical analysis, Boym explores the spaces of collective nostalgia that connect national biography and personal self-fashioning in the twenty-first century. She guides us through the ruins and construction sites of post-communist cities -- St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and Prague-and the imagined homelands of exiles-Benjamin, Nabokov, Mandelstam, and Brodsky. From Jurassic Park to the Totalitarian Sculpture Garden, from love letters on Kafka's grave to conversations with Hitler's impersonator, Boym unravels the threads of this global epidemic of longing and its antidotes.

The Nostalgia Factory

2013-09-15 Psychology

Author : Douwe Draaisma
Release : 2013-09-15
Genre : Psychology
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 523/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Nostalgia Factory by : Douwe Draaisma

Download or read book The Nostalgia Factory written by Douwe Draaisma. This book was released on 2013-09-15. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An entertaining discussion” of the role memory plays in our lives as we age, including an interview with Oliver Sacks (Times Higher Education Supplement). When we can’t call to mind the name of someone we’ve known for years, or walk into a room and forget what we came for, we start worrying. Are these lapses just “senior moments,” or something serious like dementia? In this book, a renowned specialist explores the topic of memory in later life—not only the problems but the surprisingly unexpected pleasures it can offer, such as the “reminiscence effect.” Avoiding jargon, Douwe Draaisma explains neurological phenomena and also includes a long interview with Oliver Sacks, who speaks of his own memory changes as he entered his sixties. Draaisma moves smoothly from anecdote to research and back, weaving stories and science into a compelling description of the terrain of memory and forgetfulness, dismantling myths and helping us to value the abilities of the aging mind. “For readers, the most welcome aspect of this book may be his heartening examples of the wisdom that comes with old age.”—The Washington Post “He engages with topics of considerable social and psychological importance…his use of varied sources is refreshing.”—Times Higher Education Supplement

Consumed Nostalgia

2015-09-08 Social Science

Author : Gary Cross
Release : 2015-09-08
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 606/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Consumed Nostalgia by : Gary Cross

Download or read book Consumed Nostalgia written by Gary Cross. This book was released on 2015-09-08. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. For many of us, modern memory is shaped less by a longing for the social customs and practices of the past or for family heirlooms handed down over generations and more by childhood encounters with ephemeral commercial goods and fleeting media moments in our age of fast capitalism. This phenomenon has given rise to communities of nostalgia whose members remain loyal to the toys, television, and music of their youth. They return to the theme parks and pastimes of their upbringing, hoping to reclaim that feeling of childhood wonder or teenage freedom. Consumed nostalgia took definite shape in the 1970s, spurred by an increase in the turnover of consumer goods, the commercialization of childhood, and the skillful marketing of nostalgia. Gary Cross immerses readers in this fascinating and often delightful history, unpacking the cultural dynamics that turn pop tunes into oldies and childhood toys into valuable commodities. He compares the limited appeal of heritage sites such as Colonial Williamsburg to the perpetually attractive power of a Disney theme park and reveals how consumed nostalgia shapes how we cope with accelerating change. Today nostalgia can be owned, collected, and easily accessed, making it less elusive and often more fun than in the past, but its commercialization has sometimes limited memory and complicated the positive goals of recollection. By unmasking the fascinating, idiosyncratic character of modern nostalgia, Cross helps us better understand the rituals of recall in an age of fast capitalism.

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