Carol Kammen – författare

For over thirty years, Carol Kammen’s On Doing Local History has been a valuable guide to professional and “amateur” historians alike. First published in 1986, revised in 2003, this book offers not only discussion of practical matters, but also a deeper reflection on local, public history, what it means, and why it is done. It is used in classrooms and found on the shelves of local historians across the U.S.The third edition features:Updates to chapters that focus on the current concerns and situation of local historiansA new chapter on how the field of history cooperates with other artsA new chapter on writing a congregational historyUpdated referencesWith the same passion (and now even more experience) that drove her to write the first edition, Kammen has brought her seminal work into today’s context for the next generation of local historians. The new edition ensures that this classic will continue to move anyone interested in public history towards a better understanding of why they do what they do and how it benefits their communities.

For over thirty years, Carol Kammen’s On Doing Local History has been a valuable guide to professional and “amateur” historians alike. First published in 1986, revised in 2003, this book offers not only discussion of practical matters, but also a deeper reflection on local, public history, what it means, and why it is done. It is used in classrooms and found on the shelves of local historians across the U.S.The third edition features:Updates to chapters that focus on the current concerns and situation of local historiansA new chapter on how the field of history cooperates with other artsA new chapter on writing a congregational historyUpdated referencesWith the same passion (and now even more experience) that drove her to write the first edition, Kammen has brought her seminal work into today’s context for the next generation of local historians. The new edition ensures that this classic will continue to move anyone interested in public history towards a better understanding of why they do what they do and how it benefits their communities.

In this work readers can discover the role local historians play, find out what the experts see as the values of the local history while exploring their theories, and see how local history has been practised by those who have dedicated their lives to it.

Zen and the Art of Local History is an engaging, interactive conversation that conveys the exciting nature of local history. Divided into six major themes the book covers the scope and breadth of local history:• Being a Local Historian• Topics and Sources• Staying Relevant• Getting it Right• Writing History• History OrganizationsEach chapter features one of Carol Kammen’s memorable editorials from History News. Her editorial is a “call.” Each is followed by a response from one of more than five dozen prominent players in state and local history. These Respondents include local and public historians, archivists, volunteers, and history professionals across the kaleidoscopic spectrum of local history. Among this group are Katherine Kane, Robert “Bob” Richmond, Charlie Bryan, and Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko. The result is a series of dialogues on important topics in the field of local history. This interactivity of these conversations makes Zen and the Art of Local History a unique offering in the public history field.

Zen and the Art of Local History is an engaging, interactive conversation that conveys the exciting nature of local history. Divided into six major themes the book covers the scope and breadth of local history:• Being a Local Historian• Topics and Sources• Staying Relevant• Getting it Right• Writing History• History OrganizationsEach chapter features one of Carol Kammen’s memorable editorials from History News. Her editorial is a “call.” Each is followed by a response from one of more than five dozen prominent players in state and local history. These Respondents include local and public historians, archivists, volunteers, and history professionals across the kaleidoscopic spectrum of local history. Among this group are Katherine Kane, Robert “Bob” Richmond, Charlie Bryan, and Cinnamon Catlin-Legutko. The result is a series of dialogues on important topics in the field of local history. This interactivity of these conversations makes Zen and the Art of Local History a unique offering in the public history field.

Lamentations is a novel about the first group of families crossing west to Oregon in 1842, from the perspective of the dozen women on the trip. Although none of these women left a written record of her journey, the company clerk’s daily notations provided documentation of historical events. Based on these records and the author’s own decades of work as a historian, Carol Kammen provides an interpretation of the women’s thoughts and feelings as events played out in and around the wagons heading west.In this novel the men are in the background-and we hear the women ponder the land, their right to be passing through, their lives and how they are changing, the other people in the company, the Native Americans they encounter, and their changing roles. Lamentations is about women’s reality as wives or unmarried sojourners, as literate or illiterate observers, and as explorers of the land. Kammen gives voice to these women as they consider a strange new land and the people who inhabit it, mulling over what they, as women of their time, could not say aloud. We see the mental and emotional impact of events such as the naming of peoples and lands, of a husband’s suicide, of giving birth, and of ongoing and uncertain interactions with Native peoples from the Missouri River crossing all the way to Oregon. They face the difficulties of the road, the slow trust that builds between some of them, and the oddities of the men with whom they travel. These women move from silent witnesses within a constrained gender sphere to articulate observers of a complicated world they ultimately helped to shape.