[.ca] Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue (ISBN 0299153746)

multidimensional history:
When I told a colleague I was reading a book on Oral History, we both cringed. I had to go on to say it "isn't like that." This is a book that uses people's words about their experience as a clue into the complexity of human history. When historians relate "what happened", they are furthering an establishment version of events. As this book shows, some of the events that people who lived through it recount as most important aren't recorded *anywhere*. Likewise, the accounts that are recorded as history are sometimes considered insignificant by the participants. Another aspect of this book that is interesting is its cross cultural perspective. The author is able to interpret oral texts in both English and Italian, and has done research in Kentucky and in Italy. His background also allows for literary interpretation, demonstrating that when transcribing oral history, care must be taken to accurately recount verb tenses and pronouns as a way of demonstrating whether a person is stating what happened, or how they interpret what happened, or how they have rationalized what happened to fit their current viewpoint.