David Cannadine’s book The Undivided Past: History Beyond Our Difference hits a spot with me. History does create a ‘them and us’ view of the world in which, for example, all Germans were evil in the last war, or all Muslims are part of a distinct ‘other’ civilisation. I accept some of Richard Overy’s points in his New Statesman critique and Cannadine’s apparent dismissal of class, but that does not make Cannadine’s central thesis wrong.
History homogenises both ‘us’ and ‘them’. And Cannadine is offering a new and radical perspective.
The New Statesman sees Cannadine as ‘a dreamer’, but the only way to escape the past is to create a vision of the future. I think Cannadine has made a great contribution to the development of interculturalism
See New Statesman Article at http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/03/reviewed-undivided-past-david-cannadine