In the Memory House: Reviews

IN THE MEMORY HOUSE
Fulcrum Publishing, ISBN: 1555912478

book

“Mr. Mansfield gets beneath the patina of the tangible and intangible relics of our history to locate the emotional core of our past. Through the intensity of his language, his pace and wit, the predisposed reader can take the leap into collective memory and even catch, with Mr. Mansfield, that damp, sweet scent of the past…. [A] wise and beautiful book.”
The New York Times Book Review.

“Informed by a humane spirit that prizes imagination while respecting fact…. A clearheaded, warmhearted book.”
Smithsonian.

“Provocative and elegant.”
Boston Book Review.

“This book is about all of us. Part ethnography, part description, part evocation, part illusion. It’s an x-ray that has found the soul.”
—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Harmless People.

“Now and then an idea suddenly bursts into flame, as if by spontaneous combustion. One instance is the recent explosion of books about the idea of place…the best of them, the deepest, the widest-ranging, the most provocative is Howard Mansfield’s In the Memory House.”
Hungry Mind Review.

“Anyone interested in small town America should read In the Memory House. Howard Mansfield asks profound questions about how and why we make the histories we cherish, and the ones we fear, and he has found stirring examples of the heroic presences who live among us disguised as our friends and neighbors. This is an unsentimental, consistently interesting book.”
Rosellen Brown, author of Tender Mercies and Before and After.

“That our country has for some years now been losing its democratic soul, its independence, and perhaps its mind has been noticed by various thinkers. None, however, has written about this loss as attentively, wisely and engagingly as Howard Mansfield.”
Guy Davenport, author of The Geography of the Imagination.