The History Crisis in America: Myth and Reality

On July 9, 2015, Charles F. Bryan, Jr., delivered a Banner Lecture entitled "The History Crisis in America: Myth and Reality." History occupies a paradoxical and problematic place in contemporary American culture. Numerous commentators argue that we face a growing crisis of historical amnesia, and that Americans do not value and support history as much as previous generations. They worry that history is not being properly taught. Historian Charles Bryan disagrees. “Never before have a people done as much to collect, preserve, and share their history on such a scale as have Americans,” he writes. This contrarian view of the state of history in the United States should come as no surprise to the thousands of readers of his regular columns in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Dr. Charles F. Bryan, Jr., is an American historian who spent most of his career in the museum field, including twenty as president of the Virginia Historical Society. He began writing essays for the Richmond Times-Dispatch in the 1990’s. He is coeditor of Eye of the Storm: A Civil War Odyssey and Images from the Storm: 300 Civil War Images by the Author of Eye of the Storm. The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.