Summary

Chapter 12, “That Is So Last Year,” discusses history and biography writing. Foster contrasts these with books and articles on contemporaneous events, which offer “immediacy” (174) while history and biography offer “perspective” (174) with the passage of time. While examining different kinds of writing in this category – with some authors focusing on a person, some on one single event like a battle, and others on the span of one significant year in history – Foster also traces the evolution of social values which affected this genre. He notes that the emergence of the feminist movement in the West allowed for greater historical writing examining the role of women in history. For example, one popular and more recent sub-genre under history is the writing about the wives and lovers of famous male artists, writers, politicians, etc. Since these areas used...