The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg by Richard Handler and Eric Gable

This book contends that even as Colonial Williamsburg has adopted social history as its mode of presentation of the past--which entails embracing the dirt of the past and acknowledging that history changes not so much because of the discovery of new facts as because of the appearance of new people interpreting it--it does not fully follow out on the principles that this social history approach would suggest (for example, in job mobility, in relative pay scale, and in creative and unique interpretations of the past). I found the book easy to follow in its argument and enlightening in its scope. I really enjoyed seeing the behind-the-scenes picture of Williamsburg, even if I'm not quite so radically critical of the enterprise.