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GERDA LERNER. Why History Matters: Life and Thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.249 pages. $30.00.
History matters because it tells us who we are and where we have been. History matters because it reminds us of what we have won and lost. History matters because it teaches us, and if we listen to its lessons, it helps us to correct injustice. History matters because without it only the rich and powerful have an identity and the status that goes along with it. If history were not so important, why would conquerors destroy the history of the conquered, why would men have written only the history of men, and why would there be such emotional debate surrounding a museum exhibit? These are the messages of Gerda Lerner's powerful essays in Why History Matters: Life and Thought. The essays are the reflections of a mature scholar about the history she has written and about her own life as an Austrian Jew under Hitler, as an immigrant to the United States who spoke no English, as an outsider, as a writer, and finally as a historian. In each essay Lerner...