New Zealand Listener

Look back in langour

YESTERDAY: A New History of Nostalgia

by Tobias Becker

(Harvard University Press, US$35 hb, ebook)

“Nostalgia in politics is a handy bit of abuse, making your opponent look emotional rather than rational, and backward-looking as well.

The old joke is right: nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. Really, it ain’t.

While the word has been around for three centuries-plus, “nostalgia” originally just meant “homesickness”. As late as World War II, the US Army was telling its doctors to watch out for nostalgia among recruits – meaning they wanted to go home.

The word’s shift to its modern meaning is relatively recent. In 1957, dictionary still offered only the original definition; by 1961, it

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