Review: Public History for a Post-Truth Era: Fighting Denial through Memory Movements, by Liz Ševčenko

Book Review| May 01 2024 Review: Public History for a Post-Truth Era: Fighting Denial through Memory Movements, by Liz Ševčenko Public History for a Post-Truth Era: Fighting Denial through Memory Movements by Liz Ševčenko. New York: Routledge, 2023. x + 304 pp.; notes, bibliography, index; clothbound, $170.00; paperback, $48.95; eBook, $36.71. Meredith H. Lair Meredith H. Lair George Mason University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar The Public Historian (2024) 46 (2): 172–174. https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2024.46.2.172 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Meredith H. Lair; Review: Public History for a Post-Truth Era: Fighting Denial through Memory Movements, by Liz Ševčenko. The Public Historian 1 May 2024; 46 (2): 172–174. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2024.46.2.172 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe Public Historian Search Liz Ševčenko's Public History for a Post-Truth Era: Fighting Denial through Memory Movements opens with a fascinating anecdote from President Trump's 2017 inauguration. "The last straw, for me," she writes, "was when Trump denied the rain." During one of the inaugural balls, President Trump said that the rain "just never came," but Ševčenko recalls "dignitaries huddling under umbrellas" and "water streaming from his lapels" (1). She situates President Trump's denial in a broader context of state control over individuals, discourse, and objective reality. Ševčenko argues that the United States is currently in a "post-truth era," which she defines as "the total rupture of the connection between truth, evidence, and accountability," as Trump and other authoritarians consolidate their power by destroying people's belief in the existence of truth (2, 6). Ševčenko wonders "how Americans can collectively confront our violent past…when we are this divided about the world we see with our... You do not currently have access to this content.