Philip Burnham
From Mount Vernon to the Alamo, from Plimoth Plantation to Little Bighorn, American history is on display across the United States, and many Americans receive their only impressions about important historical events from parks, homes, monuments, and battlegrounds like these. Yet the reputations of the individuals and groups enshrined at our national historic sites still tend to overshadow the lives of the minorities, women, and laborers who played essential roles in our history. How the Other Half Lived evaluates how accurately over thirty historic sites represent the contributions of women, Native Americans, African Americans, Chinese Americans, and other immigrants, and in doing so details the lives of the many unnamed people who cooked and farmed, labored and fought there. Philip Burnham recounts his travels to sites all over the country, reading the official histories and talking to curators and visitors. We see how the Abenaki Indian side is slowly being brought out at Deerfield, Massachusetts; how visitors reimagine the roles of master and slave at Somerset Place plantation in North Carolina; how women fared in the "utopian" community of New Harmony, Indiana; and how the California State Railroad Museum represents the work and lives of Chinese and African Americans. How the Other Half Lived reveals that in spite of its enormous influence on history, a significant part of the population remains almost invisible at some of the most visited monuments in the country, and explores the ways in which many sites are trying to remedy this.
How the Other Half Lived: A People's Guide to American Historical Sites