Long Shadows : Truth, Lies and History

xiv, 496pp. In black cloth-covered boards with gilt lettering to spine (boards are strong, clean, sharp and square). Internally neat, clean and tight with a hint of creaminess on pages. In its original dust jacket (slightly bumped on edges). One of the most urgent issues facing the world today is how countries shape historical memory in the aftermath of calamity, making decisions that cast long shadows into the future. Combining gripping storytelling with sharp observation, Erna Paris takes us on an extraordinary journey through four continents to explore how nations reinvent themselves after cataclysmic events. She travels through the United States, with its long-buried memory of slavery; to South Africa, where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission struggles to heal the wounds left by apartheid; to Japan, France, and Germany, where the unresolved pain of Hiroshima and the Holocaust still resonate; and to the former Yugoslavia, where she exposes the cynical shaping of historical memory.