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Dead Certainties

Unwarranted Speculations

Author Simon Schama
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Paperback
$26.00 US
Knopf | Vintage
5.24"W x 7.91"H x 0.84"D  
On sale Jun 02, 1992 | 368 Pages | 9780679736134
Grades AP/IB
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Schama uses two true "tales" --each involving a violent death, each linked to a great, tragic Boston Brahmin dynasty--that together use fact and fiction, document and imaginative reconstruction, to ponder how history is made.  The first is that of General James Wolfe, killed at the battle of Quebec in 1759; the second, in 1849, is that of George Parkman, an
eccentric Boston speculator, murdered by a Harvard professor. Out of these stories--with all of their bizarre coincidences and contradictions--Schama creates a dazzling and supremely vital work of historical imagination.

Contents

Part One: The Many Deaths of General Wolfe
1. At the Face of the Cliff
2. In Command
3. Deep in the Forest
4. On the Heights of Abraham

Part Two: Death of a Harvard Man
1. Honest Sweat: The Blacksmith's Son
2. Income: The Pedestrian
3. Enterprise: The Janitor
4. Debt: Skyrocket Jack
5. Taking Stock: The Prisoner and the Public
6. Accounts Rendered: Lawyers, Doctors and Other Solid Citizens
7. Payment Pending: The Press, the Preachers, and the Prisoner
8. Settlements: The Legatees

Afterword
© Marion Ettlinger
Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York. His publications include Patriots and Liberators, The Embarrassment of Riches, Citizens, Dead Certainties, Landscape and Memory, and Rembrandt's Eyes. View titles by Simon Schama
"An infinitely beguiling book...a mind-teasing delight...Schama brings to bear an immense array of narrative elements."

-- The New York Times Book Review



"Intriguing and provocative... Dead Certainties inspires us throughout to examine our own assumptions about history and fiction"-- Newsday

"A virtuoso performance... in Schama's hands the past loses its remoteness and takes on the noise and clutter of experience....He has become one of the few contemporary historians who are read as much for themselves as for their subjects."

-- Andrew Delbanco, New Republic

About

Schama uses two true "tales" --each involving a violent death, each linked to a great, tragic Boston Brahmin dynasty--that together use fact and fiction, document and imaginative reconstruction, to ponder how history is made.  The first is that of General James Wolfe, killed at the battle of Quebec in 1759; the second, in 1849, is that of George Parkman, an
eccentric Boston speculator, murdered by a Harvard professor. Out of these stories--with all of their bizarre coincidences and contradictions--Schama creates a dazzling and supremely vital work of historical imagination.

Contents

Part One: The Many Deaths of General Wolfe
1. At the Face of the Cliff
2. In Command
3. Deep in the Forest
4. On the Heights of Abraham

Part Two: Death of a Harvard Man
1. Honest Sweat: The Blacksmith's Son
2. Income: The Pedestrian
3. Enterprise: The Janitor
4. Debt: Skyrocket Jack
5. Taking Stock: The Prisoner and the Public
6. Accounts Rendered: Lawyers, Doctors and Other Solid Citizens
7. Payment Pending: The Press, the Preachers, and the Prisoner
8. Settlements: The Legatees

Afterword

Author

© Marion Ettlinger
Simon Schama is University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York. His publications include Patriots and Liberators, The Embarrassment of Riches, Citizens, Dead Certainties, Landscape and Memory, and Rembrandt's Eyes. View titles by Simon Schama

Praise

"An infinitely beguiling book...a mind-teasing delight...Schama brings to bear an immense array of narrative elements."

-- The New York Times Book Review



"Intriguing and provocative... Dead Certainties inspires us throughout to examine our own assumptions about history and fiction"-- Newsday

"A virtuoso performance... in Schama's hands the past loses its remoteness and takes on the noise and clutter of experience....He has become one of the few contemporary historians who are read as much for themselves as for their subjects."

-- Andrew Delbanco, New Republic

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