The Poverty of Memory: Essays on History and Empire

The Poverty of Memory deals with narratives of resistance and conquest, the exigencies of empire, the roots of global insecurity and the ecological impacts of imperial overreach. It draws on the contradictions that have increasingly defined our lives and takes aim at the certainties that have allowed others to hold sway over the affairs of pretty much everybody else.

The Poverty of Memory is about the consequences of abstention and forgetting, a combination that has never been as deadly as it is today. Above everything else, it is about remembering.

“Constantino weaves together history, the breaking sto and the lessons as distilled by social scientists and witnesses both, in one seamless tapestry.. This is a book for anyone who cares to remember, whether the chronicles are written as journalism, or as timeless literature….Constantino juxtaposes context and people and jumps from past to past-past to present to future and then back, citing events and people and places with such ease and speed he leaves the rader breathless. In Red’s writings, heroism and cowardice are timeless… This book … gives us hope that in whatever context, it is always better to pick the right and the good, because, as every story here keeps repeating, what goes around, comes around.”
-Lourdes Molina-Fernandez, from che Foreword
Editor in Chief, BusinessMirror

“It is difficult to follow the footsteps of a famous grandfather because people are prone to compare him with the ancestor whose name he bears. But Renato Redentor Constantino, in The Poverty of Memory: Essays on History and Empire, compels us to judge him on his own terms… The marshalling of litle known historical facts and the sharp analyses from the nationalist perspective are reminiscent of the original Renato Constantino, But the style and humor are distinctly his own.”
-Francisco Nemenzo
Former President, University of the Philippines

Description: 304 pages ; 21 x 14 cm

Language: English

ISBN: 971-8741-25-9