The Ever-Changing Past Why All History Is Revisionist History
By James M. Banner, Jr.
ISBN: 978-0300238457
Yale University Press (2021) - $28.00
www.yalebooks.yale.edu
Historians examine their subjects with respect to their political leanings, or themes such as colonialism, resistance, race, sexual orientation, or war. Occasionally a critic will call out a new book of history as ‘revisionist’, which is usually meant pejoratively. This criticism is based on the belief that there is some immutable ‘objective history’. It turns out this is an almost unattainable goal; it is an aspiration. “All history is revisionist history,” argues James M. Banner, Jr. in The Ever-Changing Past.
The roots of revisionist history go back right to the start. When Herodotus wrote his , he was doing more than chronicling; he was engaging in inquiry. In attempting to understand the war between the Greeks and Persians he considered different civilizations relatively equally. To gather material, he
