"An old Yugoslav aphorism goes: 'The future is not hard to predict, but the past is forever changing.' The essays gathered in this volume all deal in one way or another with the way people organize their collective memories of a past, and particularly a national past. The range of topics is remarkable, and the essays themselves are uniformly excellent--beginning with Jeffrey K. Olick's masterful introduction."--Kai Erikson, author of "A New Species of Trouble: The Human Experience of Modern Disasters "

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction / Jeffrey K. Olick 1
Rethinking a Great Event: The October Revolution as Memory Project / Frederick C. Corney 17
Of Storytellers and Master Narratives: Modernity, Memory, and History in Fascist Italy / Simonetta Falasca Zamponi 43
Idols of the Emperor / Matt K. Matsuda 72
Confucius and the Cultural Revolution: A Study in Collective Memory / Tong Zhang and Barry Schwartz 101
Institutional Legacies and Collective Memories: The Case of the Spanish Transition to Democracy / Paloma Aguilar 128
When Do Collective Memories Last? Founding Moments in the United States and Australia / Lyn Spillman 161
Legacies and Liabilities of an Insurgent Past: Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. on the House and Senate Floor / Francesca Polletta 193
Postnationalist Pasts: The Case of Israel / Uri Ram 227
What Does It Mean to Normalize the Past? Official Memory in German Politics since 1989 / Jeffrey K. Olick 259
The "End" of the Postwar: Japan at the Turn of the Millennium / Carol Gluck 289
Calendars and History: A Comparative Study of the Social Organization of National Memory / Eviatar Zerubavel 315
Afterword: Borges and Brass / Charles Tilly 339
Contributors 347
Index 351