Why Do Ruling Classes Fear History?: And Other Questions

This collection of an academic's essays and reviews aims to invigorate America's lagging Left. Kaye warns against what he sees as conservative efforts to create ``a political culture of lowered expectations'' and, in the title essay, argues that history remains ``a process of struggle for freedom and for justice.'' He supports the much-criticized National History Standards as reflecting often-neglected bottom-up history and urges his colleagues to push their students to become publicly engaged as social and political critics. He finds inspiration in the works of Tom Paine, C. Wright Mills and E.P. Thompson and offers sympathetic reviews of works by Russell Jacoby, John Sayles and Benjamin Barber. For all his passion, however, Kaye, who teaches social change and development at the University of Wisconsin, is mainly addressing the converted. (Jan.)