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Book Review
First
City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory. By Gary B. Nash. (
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. 383 pp. $34.95, ISBN
0-8122-3630-0.)
| Philadelphia
is probably the most important city in America's collective memory of the
past, Gary B. Nash reminds us. Both the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution were drawn up there, and it was the nation's capital from 1790
until 1800. How Philadelphians remembered, celebrated, and forgot their past
from the eighteenth century until the present is First City's
subject. At the heart of this well-crafted book is an examination of how
Philadelphia's museums and libraries have collected and thus recollected the
past. Each chapter opens with a succinct summary of Philadelphia's history
in the period under consideration. Nash then examines the ways in which the
city's museums and libraries, most prominently the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania, gathered materials and displayed them. |
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