Re: Nonfiction, postwar sources for course

Sharon Michalove, Editor, H-Albion (mlove@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu)
Thu, 21 Dec 1995 18:55:48 -0600

Date: Thu, 21 Dec 1995 14:00:33 -0600 (CST)
From: Meredith Veldman <mveldman@whflemming.hist.lsu.edu>

I strongly recommend that you consider for a textbook T.W. Heyck's The
Peoples of the British Isles, Vol. III--I've used it in my 20th-C Britain
survey for a number of years now. It's the only textbook I've ever
assigned that students actually praise. I've even had a student thank me
for assigning it! I've also had great success using the Beatles' Sgt.
Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band as a "reading" for 1960s Britain. No,
most of the students have never heard it, not in its entirety; they view
it as so old that they have no problem responding to it as an historical
document. This year for the first time I assigned both Martin Wiener's
English CUlture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit and W.D.
Rubinstein's Capitalism, Culture, and English Decline. The students got
quite involved in the debate between the two--I'll use them both again.
Meredith Veldman
Associate Professor
LSU, Baton Rouge
mveldman@whflemming.hist.lsu.edu