Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History

This is an excellent book, in which the author examines how leaders use examples from history to support their actions, irrespective of whether these examples are appropriate or not. It is an indispensible book for those interested in history and current events.

"Knowledge of the past helps us to challenge dogmatic statements and sweeping generalizations. It helps us think more clearly." It is incumbent upon us as individuals to teach ourselves what came before and how best to use those nuanced lessons to guide us in the present and on into the future. And if we are too intellectually lazy to do so, there are plenty of other people all to eager to fill that void - usually to self-serving and ill effects.

Margaret's book about uses & abuses of history is in a way short but quite interesting. She manages to cover a wide spectrum of examples from all over the world where history can be comforting for some & painful for others & how humans try to use history & distort it, sometimes cleverly & sometimes drastically. I do not agree with the previous review which is rather harsh & somewhat unfair with its unconvincing points, but nonetheless, history is abused by many, politicians & leaders, who want to bend it for their advantage resulting in fabricated historical accounts which causes further strive & suffering. While history can be & should be used to learn lessons from it that can widen our perspective if analysed objectively. I have seen examples of what the writer warns of in the begining about casual historians & the need for professional historians to fill the gap thats being exploited by others. I recommend this book to anyone who's interested in world history & they can find something in it that relates to them or a topic that interested them.

The proposed health care symbol resembles a swastika, angry citizens who protest against national health care are traitors, the debate over the war in Iraq. Who is right? Who is lying?Are any nations really a "city on a hill", a shining beacon to others? Can a knowledge of history help us understand and deal with the difficult times in which we live?Particularly in our present era, this slim and provocative book by Margaret McMillian deserves wide readership. Professor McMillian author of the magisterial Paris 1919 has written this short volume on how history has been used and abused throughout time by nations and leaders for various purposes. She paints on a wide canvas and she includes anecdotes that deal with Hitler and his use of nationalism, the Treaty of Versailles, World War 2, the Cold War, the war in Iraq and many others. She reminds us that history is shaped and written by humans with definite points of view and agendas. Although participants to historical events help us understand the past, it is up to historians to weigh all the evidence and try to come up with some understanding of the past. The author does a fine job of dealing with this particular topic when she deals with the controversy over exhibits in the U.S. and Canada that dealt with telling the story of bombing Axis cities in World War Two. She reminds us that "history is often a foreign country" and that it does not always give us easy answers.It often eludes easy comparisons and generalizations such as World War Two and The War on Terror are the same and Saddam Hussein was another Hitler.Even though historical analogies do not give us easy answers, history keeps us thinking, it teaches us humility and it sometimes give us a wider stage on which to do our thinking. This book does not yield simple lessons,it is complex and subtle like the fascinating subject that it examines.

In this slim but important volume, historian Margaret MacMillan sets out to challenge those who use or misuse history for their own purposes. Few escape her glance, from the Chinese who cultivate a sense of victimization even now that they have risen to the status of economic superpower (and whose leaders cite a sign that never existed in Shanghai, denying entrance to a park to Chinese and dogs) to both Palestinians and Israelis, quarreling over the question of "who was here first" with reference to the lands now under Israeli authority. MacMillan's two most recent works (one about the Versailles Treaty of 1919; the other about Nixon and Mao) have given her tremendous insight into the way history is used and abused in geopolitical and political conflicts around the world. Bad history, she writes, tells only parts of complex stories, is selective, misleading and can lead to the creation of national 'myths' that hold their own dangers. She uses examples to bolster every point, such as the Serbian myths surrounding the defeat of Prince Lazar, their national hero, by Ottoman Turks at the battle of Kosovo in 1389. In fact, MacMillan points out, Lazar was simply one Serb prince (not a national leader); while he was killed, the battle was widely viewed as a draw and even claimed by Serbs at the time as a victory; and far from marking the end of Serb independence, an independent Serbia remained for decades. The Orthodox church used Lazar's death to bolster the myth of a resistance to Turkish rule for centuries; in the 19th century, when that myth collided with the emergence of nationalism across Europe, the result was not only the bloody conflicts in the former Yugoslavia but also one of the triggering events of the still-bloodier World War I. MacMillan's command of her facts, from the well known to the most obscure, make this a convincing and lively read. Still, she's treading on perilous ground by challenging such cherished myths and pointing out how historical facts have been distorted to support them. It doesn't matter that she's an equal-opportunity critic (Both Palestinians and Israelis get their share of criticism for manipulating the facts in the ongoing "who was here first" argument.) Her argument is straightforward and yet provocative: only by recognizing that the stories we may like to tell ourselves aren't always the true or complete ones do we have a chance to take advantage of what history has to teach us: that others have myths that they, too, cherish; that we can and should question our values and convictions from time to time, and that the result will be a better understanding of ourselves and our place in the world. "It can be dangerous to question the stories people tell about themselves because so much of our identity is both shaped by and bound up with our history," MacMillan writes. (Indeed, just take a look at Sacred Geography: A Tale of Murder and Archeology in the Holy Land for evidence.) That doesn't stop MacMillan from tack