Truth in history
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Truth in history
Belknap Press, 1979
- : cloth
- : pbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
- Volume
-
: cloth ISBN 9780674910256
Description
A professional critique of the tendency in academic scholarship to prove worth, which becomes relevance and which in turn is interpreted as a search not for truth but political correctness. Handlin explores the social history of historians and how and why a discipline surrenders the search for truth in favour of assertions of ideological purity.
- Volume
-
: pbk ISBN 9780674910263
Description
One of the most eminent historians of our time offers here a perceptive guide to the study of history. Truth in History teaches how to read, how to analyze, how to discriminate. It is as helpful to the reader whose history is created daily in the news as it is to the professional historian whose field is in a crisis of disarray.
A Pulitzer Prize winner and mentor for more than a generation of American historians, Oscar Handlin instructs his readers in the fundamentals of his field. He tells us how to deal with evidence, how to discern patterns amid flux, how to situate ourselves in history, and how to recognize where fact shades subtly into opinion. He combines a historian's knowledge with a historiographer's breadth and a philosopher's temperament. He is concerned with a historian's limitations and with the ways one can operate honestly within those limitations. He brings a full appreciation of the past to his evaluation of what is modern. And while carefully examining recent developments in his discipline, he culls genuine achievements from the trends that confuse originality with true worth.
Handlin everywhere enlivens his discussion with brilliant details. As he pursues broad definitions of history and its uses, he also attends to specific subjects, showing how they bear directly on each other and on his concerns. He deals with Populism, capitalism, laissez-faire, the two-party system, the New History, ethnicity, and roots, treating all with the flair of an accomplished man of letters. Only a scholar of Handlin's experience and expertise could have brought such a wealth of particular facts to an issue of such general importance: truth in history.
Table of Contents
Preface. The Abuses of History Personal Reflections on a Calling 1. A Discipline in Crisis 2. Living in a Valley The Central Themes of American History 3. A History of American History 4. Theories of Historical Interpretation 5. Historical Criticism 6. An Instance of Criticism Dealing with the Evidence 7. How to Read a Word 8. How to Count a Number 9. Seeing and Hearing 10. History in a World of Knowledge Persistent Themes and Hard Facts 11. Political Theory and Popular Thought 12. Man and Magic 13. Good Guys and Bad 14. The Two-Party System The Uses of History 15. The Diet of a Ravenous Public 16. Ethnicity and the New History 17. The Uses of History Acknowledgments Index
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