Book Description
Wait Till Next Yearis the story of a young girl growing up in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, when owning a single-family home on a tree-lined street meant the realization of dreams, when everyone knew everyone else on the block, and the children gathered in the streets to play from sunup to sundown. The neighborhood was equally divided among Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans, and the corner stores were the scenes of fierce and affectionate rivalries.
We meet the people who influenced Goodwin's early life: her father, who emerged from a traumatic childhood without a trace of self-pity or rancor and who taught his daughter early on that she should say whatever she thought and should bring her voice into any conversation at any time; her mother, whose heart problems left her with the arteries of a seventy-year-old when she was only in her thirties and whose love of books allowed her to break the boundaries of the narrow world to which she was confined by her chronic illness; her two older sisters; her friends on the block; the local storekeepers; her school friends and teachers.
This is also the story of a girlhood in which the great religious festivals of the Catholic church and the seasonal imperatives of baseball combined to produce a passionate love of history, ceremony, and ritual. It is the story of growing up in what seemed on the surface a more innocent era until one recalls the terror of polio, the paranoia of McCarthyism reflected even in the children's games, the obsession with A-bomb drills in school, and the ugly face of racial prejudice. It was a time whose relative tranquillity contained the seeds of the turbulent decade of the sixties.
Customer Reviews:
Wait till Next Year.......2007-07-13
Most interesting for me since I am a "wait till next year" Red Sox fan. She's an excellent writer and commentator and this lives up to her standard.
Really Good Read!.......2007-06-27
Ms. Goodwin knows how to tell a good story. In addition to telling us about her childhood in a New York City suburb in the 1950s, she also talks about the changes America was going through in this time period: economic development and the impact on the family, the beginnings of the civil rights movement, the "end" of baseball as the American pasttime. The book is well-written and very enjoyable.
A great book on taking your daughter to the game!.......2007-04-27
Great book. It inspires me to take my two little girls to games. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
A Fan's Notes.......2007-04-10
Goodwin grew up in New York in the 40's, and this memoir tracks her Brooklyn Dodgers through their World Series win in 1956.
Something to Touch the Heart.......2007-03-27
So many people recommended Doris Kearns Goodwin's charming memoir, "Wait Till Next Year," that I couldn't wait to get my hands on it.
Experiencing her youth in the forties and fifties as I and many of my reading friends did, Goodwin struck chords that reverberated movingly with us. Though the story takes place in Rockville Centre, New York, a suburb just a train ride away from Brooklyn, her pictures of herself and her friends in front yards and back yards, her schools and churches, drug store and neighborhood could have been taken in any American suburb of those distant days.
These memories make up a different kind of "fan's notes," as she tracks the ups and downs and near misses of her beloved Brooklyn Dodgers, the team she followed faithfully as a six-year-old in 1949, until "dem bums" finally delivered a World Series championship in 1956. Her team, with Gil Hodges and Roy Campanella, and even their radio announcer, Vin Scully, moved to Los Angeles in 1958 and became my wife's favorite team. My "Whiz Kids," the Philadelphia Phillies of the fifties, with Robin Roberts and Ritchie Ashburn and Eddie Waitkus received mention and reminded my wife and me of the days when you could count on the same players returning loyally to play year after year for the same team.
In addition to the thread of baseball running through the book, Goodwin touches on national events that characterized the times for anyone who lived through them: the death of FDR, the Korean War, the Rosenberg spy case, McCarthyism, and forced school integration in Little Rock. She remembers Elvis and James Dean and covers faithfully the rituals of growing up in the Catholic Church. There is something here to touch the heart of anyone who grew up in those naive times of the 1940s and 1950s.
Average customer rating:
- Good Background Information
- A Christian history teacher's review
- Surprisingly historical
- A Must read.
- Interesting, non-biased work by a scholar of ancient history
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In the Fullness of Time: A Historian Looks at Christmas, Easter, and the Early Church
Paul L. Maier
Manufacturer: Kregel Publications
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ASIN: 0825433290 |
Book Description
This engaging and beautifully written narrative sheds a brilliant new light on the life of Jesus and the courageous men and women who carried His message throughout a hostile empire. Full-color photos and illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Good Background Information.......2007-10-01
Maier does a good job putting Christmas and Easter into their appropriate historical contexts. Lots of good information that helps to place both into perspective.
The third part of the book, on the early church, is not as well done. There is less historical and archaelogical information brought into play. It was still pretty good, just not as good as the first two sections.
Still, I would recommend this book as one to help build a foundation.
A Christian history teacher's review.......2007-05-14
Paul Maier is a truly gifted lecturer. I've had the pleasure of watching two of his videos and if I lived anywhere near Western Michigan University, I'd sneak into the back of his classroom (he is a member of the history faculty there) on a regular basis - he has a gift for making the First Century A.D. accessible.
"In the Fullness of Time" continues this tradition. Maier has basically consolidated 3 other books into one larger volume (with a few changes) and he discusses the first Christmas, the first Easter and the ministries of the early Apostles, especially Paul and Peter.
Maier does a great job of bringing actual documentation that supports the stories of Christmas, Easter and the Book of Acts. He includes the works of Roman and Jewish historians, explains Roman and Jewish religious and political practices and deals with alternate theories that have been proposed. While this could be dry reading, Maier makes it lively and this volume reads more like a novel than a textbook.
So, who is this book for? If you are a well-read Christian who has looked into many of the facts that back the New Testament as it is written on your own, you won't find much new ground covered in this book. The internet has lots of this information scattered about. However, you are unlikely to find sources as concise and as well-written as this one. Plus, if you are interested in further research, it is well-documented with tons of footnotes.
If you are a new Christian or are newly interested in the history behind Christianity, this is a powerful introduction.
I give this one a grade of "A"
Surprisingly historical .......2006-07-30
Maybe it's because I enjoy reading historical literature... or maybe I am facinated by the notion the Gospel accounts are historical in nature. Paul Maier has done a wonderful job combining backround historical context, archeological artifacts, and a clear logical approach into a credible and refreshing look at what is was like to: experience the first Christmas, the first Easter, and what it was like for the early Christians after the resurrection. This is surprisingly enjoyable read.
A Must read........2005-05-20
Pail Maier, a expert in ancient history, has written a great book. from my understanding is that, this book was three different books now put into one. If you are a new Christian, you need this book. If you read this book as a new believer, you will have a better grasp of the background of the NT in reading this book, than going to a expositional preaching church for two years. It will lay a great foundation for your walk with the living Christ. If you a long time believer, and have not read this book, you should, for it will open your eyes, to the NT. Dr. Maier goes into the Christmas story, Easter Sunday and the early church. Great book.
Interesting, non-biased work by a scholar of ancient history.......2002-03-14
When I saw Paul Maier interviewed in a documentary on the life of Jesus, I searched for titles by this author, and when this book was listed, I immediately ordered it. I wasn't dissappointed.
Maier is a professor of ancient history at Western Michigan, and brings credibility and scholarship to a subject that is frequently approached with bias, often from polar perspectives. Professor Maier is one of the leading scholars on the writings of first century Jewish historian Josephus, and this book includes appropriate and informative references to this ancient source. As a student of history and an attorney, I found the book stimulating and thought provoking. However, the book most certainly does not read like a history text, and is interesting to both the historian and the person simply looking for some information on the historical context of the birth of Christ, his crucification and the biblical account of his resurrection. The book also examines the early church and the spread of Christianity. Anyone with an interest in these topics should read this work.
I very much recommend this book, and look forward to reading other works by Paul Maier.
Book Description
The “German question” haunts the modern world: How could so civilized a nation be responsible for the greatest horror in Western history? In this unusual fusion of personal memoir and history, the celebrated scholar Fritz Stern refracts the question through the prism of his own life. Born in the Weimar Republic, exposed to five years of National Socialism before being forced into exile in 1938 in America, he became a world-renowned historian whose work opened new perspectives on the German past.
Stern brings to life the five Germanys he has experienced: Weimar, the Third Reich, postwar West and East Germanys, and the unified country after 1990. Through his engagement with the nation from which he and his family fled, he shows that the tumultuous history of Germany, alternately the strength and the scourge of Europe, offers political lessons for citizens everywhere—especially those facing or escaping from tyranny. In this wise, tough-minded, and subtle book, Stern, himself a passionately engaged citizen, looks beyond Germany to issues of political responsibility that concern everyone. Five Germanys I Have Known vindicates his belief that, at its best, history is our most dramatic introduction to a moral civic life.
Customer Reviews:
Outstanding!!.......2007-10-02
The question for Western European Civilization is how to understand that a cultural tradition that brought us Plato, Michaelangelo, Brahms, Bach, etc also brought us Hitler, Stalin, and Nazism. This book adumbrates the shape that an answer to that question might take. Stern interweaves his own personal family story of life in Germany with his extraordinary knowledge of German history and culture. Each of the personal, cultural, and historical insights mutually enrich and enhance the others. If you have an interest in this topic I can't recommend this book any more highly. I was almost late for work one morning as I was engrossed in it.
It's more of a memoir than a history..........2007-09-09
It has more splashes of personal color than any real history has a right to. One should not take the history here *too* seriously.
Before I go further, Geoff Pietsch's review is the best one here.
While I enjoyed the language and prose, especially in the first 2/3rds of the book, the author is somewhat sloppy about noting people without explaining the context of their personalities. There was alot to find out about how people like his family operated in the period before the 1930s. And much of what he wrote about moving to America and getting established as a historian was pretty cool.
The flaws were pretty big, though. The last third of the book took me three weeks to read, when the first 2/3rds took me about two weeks. The author starts name-dropping like heck and the book begins to ramble from minutia to minutia. Although the self-portrait is a liberal, when I read and conceptualized the book as a whole, I got the strong sense that Stern was like some Jewish people who's conceptualization of the holocaust was that, well, "We're White Too". I don't think he's particularly racist, but there was not a little conveyed discomfort in his chapter on china, or about his involvement in dealing with student radicalism (which sometimes involved african american issues). Moreover his visits to the global south was conspicuous in the absence of dusky latinos in most places or blacks in Brasil. Lastly, he seems to have had relations with very few people who weren't of the tippy top social crust, and he apparently took pride in that as well. By the end, I was wondering what his reaction would be if I (black man) showed up in his garden. I concluded that he was something like a more liberal analogue of Kissinger, who didn't really believe in much of the world besides the US and Europe. I was left with the feeling that I would enjoy the company of Robert Rubin, Neidermayer, Oppenheimer, or George Soros (biographies of succesfull jewish people I've read) more than I would Fritz Stern. One really should stop when one gets to the China chapter, and you'll have gotten what is best about this book.
Finally, the context. It is my belief that Fritz Stern wrote this book to help bring together the US and Germany and repair much of the damage done by the Bush Administration. He also seems to want to encourage Germany to adopt a more american neoliberal stance. He definitly wanted to have Germany and rest of Europe together under the same Atlanticist umbrella. In those lights, it is not a surprise that there is a lot of russo-phobia in the book. Subtle, but there. I began to wonder if he doesn't realize that Germany has to have a Russia policy independent of the US's aegis due to strong economic ties and geopolitical realities. It would contradict his Bismark expertise (Bismark's Russia policy was aimed at drawing it out of France's orbit and securing his rear for all of his quick victories).
It is certainly not a worthless book for all of it's faults. Just know that it does have serious contextual faults for all of the Babbits (bourgousie philistines) out there.
A must for anyone curious about German Jewish history.......2007-09-01
Written with avuncular charm, "Five Germany's I Have Known" serves simultaneously as an overview of German history from the time of the Kaiser through to the reunification, and in-fact beyond (Stern worked at the American Embassy in Germany during the beginning of the Clinton administration); and as a personal memoir of a first-class academic and intellectual who was intimately connected to the history he was studying. Although at times he can be overly ponderous, and as memoir, it is really a memoir of the intellect more than of life (the dissolution of his marriage and quick re-marriage is given less detail than the composition of various West German cabinets), the book's virtues far outweigh any criticisms.
The history of modern Germany through the eyes of a person.......2007-08-09
whose family lived through it. Actually this remarkable book is more like a biography of the Stern family which is quite fascinating. Stern uses his personal experiences, and those of his family, friends, and colleagues, to provide a unique perspective on Germany history during those turbulent times. A very interesting read and one that speaks well for humanity, forgiveness, and self-assessment as well as analysis of the political and historical events in Germany.
The refugee returns as guru.......2007-08-07
This book is a fusion of the personal life of Stern and his family and of the history of the country in which he was born and from which they emigrated to the United States in 1938. The history of Germany up to 1945 is told in a workmanlike and rather dry manner. Soaked as we are in this history already, we can read that elsewhere. We hear of the personal experiences during the Nazi period of acculturated and patriotic German Jews (both Stern's parents, though of Jewish origin, had been baptized as children at the end of the 19th century); but these, too, have been the subject of countless books. Although Stern's father, grandfathers and the circle of friends were distinguished medical men and scientists, they may not be of the same absorbing interest to the reader as they are to the author, especially if, as here, the author does not really bring them to life, so that they remain mere names. The book becomes more interesting after the first 130 pages which cover the period from 1871 to 1938 and are concerned mostly with the older generations; for the author himself was just seven years old when the Nazis came to power, and just 12 when the family emigrated.
But the child's experience of life in Nazi Germany had been unpleasant enough, and they made Stern aware of politics at an age when children in more fortunate lands are unlikely to concern themselves with such matters. In the United States, from his schooldays onwards, Stern began to speak and write on politics. He attributes his liberalism (his opposition to communism and also to McCarthyism) to what he had learnt from the deprivation of liberty in Nazi Germany. In due course he became a prolific organizer of petitions and resolutions against authoritarianism wherever he found it, determined not to be like those intellectuals who had kept silent during the Nazi period. And he was a severe critic of American foreign policy, of its reliance on military force, and of the neo-conservatives.
On graduating, Stern had become a historian at Columbia University, and had focussed increasingly on German history. Immediately after the war, while detesting the Nazis, he knew that there had been a democratic Germany which the Nazis had overwhelmed but whose roots could surely be nourished. I recognize, as someone who has had similar experiences, the mixed feelings with which he first went back to Germany on a lecture tour in 1954, aware that many Germans had lived in an inner emigration during the Nazi period, but wondering about the past of so many Germans who claimed never to have been Nazis; feeling a sense of virtue as a representative of democracy, and relishing that he was returning as an American and under American auspices and protection. He continues, of course, with his narrative history of Germany, and this becomes more interesting after 1945 - in part because our schools and universities pay so little attention to it (compared with the emphasis on Nazi and pre-Nazi Germany) and also because the adult Stern has more first-hand and detailed experience of it than he had of the earlier period.
The varying views of German academics he reports in a series of anecdotes reveal the many-faceted nature of German reactions to their past, ranging from the aggrieved and insensitive to a full-hearted acceptance of the indelible stain of Nazism. He is good at discussing the several debates between Germans about their own past: in the 1960s about Germany's responsibility for the First World War (the Fischer controversy), in which Stern himself took part, essentially on Fischer's side; in the 1980s about the so-called Historikerstreit, triggered by Nolte's attempts to relativize Nazi atrocities by presenting them as reactions to earlier Soviet atrocities; and in the 1990s about Goldhagen's unscholarly attack on the entire German nation as having been `Hitler's Willing Executioners', which Stern vehemently critiqued.
The five Germanies of the title are pre-Nazi Germany, Nazi Germany, the GDR, the DDR (where Stern was allowed to consult historical archives), and Reunited Germany; but stretches of the book have nothing to do with any of these: there is, for example, a long passage on the 1968 student revolt at Columbia University and Stern's attitude towards it: sympathetic towards the students' grievances, strongly critical of their bullying methods. And there is a chapter of 58 pages which, though not without interest, is attached to the German question by the thinnest of threads or no threads at all; but they give Stern the excuse for including accounts of his travels, often financed by the Ford Foundation, to study the political climate and/or to lecture in Northern Africa, the Middle East, India, Latin America, France, the Soviet Union under Brezhnev (interesting analysis), Poland on the eve of Solidarity, and post-Maoist China (after the Cultural Revolution but before Tienanmen Square). Everywhere Stern had received introductions to prominent people (especially to dissidents).
Stern was much in demand as a speaker on the international stage. The high point of this was the invitation in 1987 to address the Bundestag on the anniversary of the East Berlin uprising of June 17 1953. I found the pages dealing with this speech and its reception (pp.443 to 450) among the most gripping in the book.
Stern is critical, not of German reunification, but of the way Kohl handled the issue and of the insensitive way in which West Germans have treated the East Germans.
Stern's judgments on historical and political issues strike me as being wise and sane. His book, however, is sadly marred for me by a narcissistic flavour (despite frequent protestations of feeling humble and surprised at the honours bestowed on him), and not least by his frequent quotations of laudatory reviews and congratulatory remarks in letters he received from famous people.
Customer Reviews:
History and Our Times.......2007-07-12
The Houses of History is a very complete book for those who are enthralled by history. Preferably, for those who like to understand first the big picture concerning our changing times. This unique book takes you throughout the stages of history during the twentieth century and better yet, through the different trends that those who record history have faced from the modern to the post modern times.It also includes interesting excerpts for each particular history theory. This product must be read by anyone who wants to understand nowadays' social, cultural and political movements.
useful.......2007-01-23
I read this book for a methods course as well as some of the other reviewers. The format of the book is useful since it provides a synopsis of the selected perspectives as well as a reading that provides an example of the method/interpretation in action. While it is not always entertaining, it is not designed to be; it is a critical reader designed to promote critical discussion. I completed an annotated bibliography of the work (since Troup references many scholars and their works) and found this very useful so that I could read the better known examples that Troup discusses in each section. This book is a good spring board to further studies in the historian's journey to becoming thinking historian who is sensitive to the relationship between worldview, interpretation and methods in the historian's research.
Dull Dull Dull This Book needs to be reworked........2005-12-12
I am a university student majoring in history. I was forced to endure the reading of this book for a course in historical methods. I found the book to be very dull in its presentation and arguments about the historical house. This is not just my opinion but that of my fellow students as well. In a class of thirty people only two or three found the book excellent to use the rest of us found it a disaster. There are numerous other sources out there that present this material in a more colorful and interesting fashion. I am no fan of this book. The book does present the very broad subdivisions of historical research. I disagree with anyone who is in the study of history that allows one book, one professor, or one course to mold their like or dislike for this discipline. I suffered through this book because it was mandated for the course. I did learn something about the topic. So in that way the book did have useful information in it. I just would like to suggest to those who want to learn about the historical houses of history that there is an abundant amount of material available both on the web and published that is much better in presentation then this book. For the dullness and lackluster presentation of the material I gave this book only 3 stars.
Great intro text - which Jay obviously couldn't handle.......2005-07-11
Great book. Before I read it, I had been confused by the various historiographical 'houses.' Now I know what's what. Anyone who's doing a historiography course at university should read this book because it (a) explains most things well and (b) makes it clear that there is a lot of conscious consideration behind how historians approach the past, which I think anyone who plans to study the past for a living needs to know. Jay's negative review shows he isn't willing to engage in a sophisticated analysis of the historian's influence on history.
Don't listen to Jay!.......2002-12-05
This is a response to the first review written by Jay, who claims that this book made him hate history, and further, change majors because of it. If this is the case, then that it great. The study of history doesn't need people like Jay! The value of this text is that it presents a brief synopsis of the main schools of historical thought, and an according sample with each. Jay is obviously of the dominant school (empiricist) that thinks history chould be treated like a science, without concern for philosophical questions. Despite what you may think about postmodernism, it has unearthed the deception of the empiricist school. By professing their method as THE path to THE truth, empiricists cut off unthought ideas by setting up a power discourse. They rule the universities, and anyone who wants to become a 'professional' historian must take his/her PHD pill from them. HOUSES OF HISTORY is a great text for the beginner in that it provides a brief summary of the schools of history, which is invaluable in undertaking a historiography course. Historiography is NOT boring and useless, and any historian who thinks it is is simply trying to prevent new ideas from emerging, ideas that might (oh no!) compromise his/her position. Don't listen to Jay.
Book Description
A superb reference for writers, researchers, students and teachers, this dictionary-style book illuminates everyday life in the 1800s, decade by decade. Readers will find hundreds of otherwise obscure facts about:
* Popular slang--from the range to the underworld
* How to furnish a farmhouse or outfit a barn
* How much it cost for a shot of whiskey or to mail a letter
* Styles of the fashionable--and not so fashionable
* Courtship and marriage rituals
* Popular food and drink--including brand names
* And much, much more!
Customer Reviews:
One book you will need as a writer........2007-08-23
This book has all the stuff you will need to make your novel seem real. I promise you will enjoy this book even if you are not a writer. I found the answers to all the questions I had been asking. I thank Marc McCutcheon for all his hard work. It has helped me.
Great information at your finger tips.......2007-01-29
This is a great reference guide. I am currently writing a romance novel set in the mid 1800's. The chapters are easy to find what you're looking for and the examples show how the word or phrase was used. If your looking for a great reference guide that is straight to the point I would highly recommend "Everyday Life in the 1880's"
Mediocre, missing essential information, poorly constructed.......2006-06-12
This book lacks any information about education. Such an essential subject - affecting children and adults alike - should certainly be included.
Nor does it include information about art (visual/performing) or literature pertinent to the people at the time.
It also has no index, so that searching for anything is ridiculously slow.
Visuals are lacking - textual descriptions of hair or various equipment are poor substitutes for an image.
Essentially it is a poorly organized dictionary, and stating that it is "a guide for writers, students and historians" is an overstatement to say the least!
Simply a dictionary .......2006-03-09
When I read the description of the book I thought that this book would actually provide information about everyday life in the 1800's; instead, it is merely a dictionary. There are no passages that describe fashion, etiquette, industry, clothing, or anything else useful to a historian. Instead, the book merely provides one sentence descriptions of objects you probabaly can already identify. This book may be useful if you come across the name of an item in a primary text and you are not sure what it is. However, it provides very little useful general information
Holy disorganization, Batman...........2005-12-28
It's been a few months since I read this, but I thought I might give a review.
I found this book horrid. It was not organized in a way that would be simple and easy for a reader. As a writer of historical fiction I was interested in finding out about daily life during the Civil War. But I would find references from all years thrown together so I had to fish out the important details.It was not broken down by years or decades which I think would have been much easier. I gave up on this book because I couldn't find the information I needed.
If you are a writer and are thinking about this book I suggest getting it from the library, and if you believe it will be of use to you buy it then.
Book Description
A man of impressive mental powers, of extraordinary intellectual range, and—last but not least—of exceptional integrity, George Frost Kennan (1904-2005) was an adviser to presidents and secretaries of state, with a decisive role in the history of this country (and of the entire world) for a few crucial years in the 1940s, after which he was made to retire; but then he became a scholar who wrote seventeen books, scores of essays and articles, and a Pulitzer Prize–winning memoir. He also wrote remarkable public lectures and many thousands of incisive letters, laying down his pen only in the hundredth year of his life.
Having risen within the American Foreign Service and been posted to various European capitals, and twice to Moscow, Kennan was called back to Washington in 1946, where he helped to inspire the Truman Doctrine and draft the Marshall Plan. Among other things, he wrote the “X” or “Containment” article for which he became, and still is, world famous (an article which he regarded as not very important and liable to misreading). John Lukacs describes the development and the essence of Kennan’s thinking; the—perhaps unavoidable—misinterpretations of his advocacies; his self-imposed task as a leading realist critic during the Cold War; and the importance of his work as a historian during the second half of his long life.
Customer Reviews:
Good Introduction to Keenan.......2007-09-20
Lukacs' George Kennan is purpouted to be about the character of the man but rather serves as a very short biography of the man that ensured the defeat of the Soviet Union then any other American president. Many years after Keenan hammered out his containment philosophy, he remained convinced that the essential problem regarding Russia was not communism but instead was the paranoid nature of the Russian state. Look no farther then the so-called head of the Russian Republic now. Unlike, our current administration appointments, George Kennan was curious about the rest of the world and before he wrote anything down contemplated for every eventuality. That Lukacs knew Keenan is the ultimate flaw in the book, because there are several points where the author veers into untrammeled hagiography. But overall, a good introduction to Keenan and the tremendous impact he had on the world.
An admiring overview of a remarkable life.......2007-07-07
Lukacs views this as a study of a man's character, but it's really more of an overview of Kennan's life. It probably will have limited appeal to people who have read a lot of Kennan's work, particularly his books and collection. It is probably better for someone like me who is familiar with his famous work on "containment" and has read some of Kennan's more recent magazine pieces in the New Yorker and elsewhere. Kennan had a remarkable career that straddled academia and government and his mastery of Russian and German allowed him to get beyond the usual sources of information that fed Cold War debates. He was truly a man of the 20th century who was engaged in the world from the time shortly after WWI through the end of the Cold War.
Lukacs provides the broad outlines of Kennan's life and what he felt to be Kennan's most important books. In that respect, he has written a biography that is likely to stimulate interest in Kennan's longer works, particular those from the middle Cold War era. Lukacs never really describes his relationship to Kennan, although it is clear that they were friends and collegial with respect to topics such as foreign affairs. It may be that this was written too close to Kennan's recent death to provide the distance necessary to fully consider another person's life.
As a character study, the book falls somewhat short and misses obvious connections between experiences and points of view. There is a short description of Kennan's religious journey (from a Presbyterian upbringing to an vaguely described flirtation with Catholicisim and finally adoption of Episcopalianism) without recognizing the essential Calvinism in Kennan's lifelong world view. Kennan was clearly an enthusiast of bourgeois values, in the traditional sense and sympathetic to rather authoritarian, despotic government. He advocated a kind of government by "wise men" that certainly suggests a belief in "a predetermined elect". Ironically, he had the opportunity to see how policy by wise men could be undermined by broad political currents (the Truman years) or could bring about disastrous policies (the JFK years). Lukacs wonders how Kennan would have viewed this philosophy in light of our current government by "wise men" most of whom have come from the conservative "think tank" world, something that Kennan probably would have viewed as an a oxymoron. Kennan's view of the world comes off as lacking holism in important areas. While recognizing that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior, even at a political/social level, Kennan seems to have minimized the dynamic nature of societies and the inevitable presence of internal and external forces which propel societies in new directions. Rather he is a humanist of the old school and conservative in the sense of being skeptical of "progress" and intervention. In many cases he proved prescient, as in Vietnam and the execution of the Cold War, but in others such as the rise of fascism, his cautious view of the world was inadequate.
Kennan lived a remarkable life and was able to see a much of the world and play a part in US foreign policy at key points in our recent history. He was a true scholar and one unmoved by constraining or trendy paradigms. His status as an outsider and a public intellectual probably lessened his academic prestige, but his depth and insight make him someone worth revisiting and reading further. As a character study, this book has serious analytic shortcomings. As an affectionate brief biography, it works better and it should stimulate more interest in the life and work of this remarkable man.
Worth reading.......2007-06-13
I knew almost nothing about Kennan before I read this book, but Lukacs got me interested in learning more about Kennan and reading Kennan's books. This is by no means a balanced, objective, or scholarly work - Lukacs very obviously admires Kennan and makes no attempt to hide this. If you want a scholarly analysis of Kennan's life, work, or legacy, this book is not for you. But if you want to read a mostly well-written and interesting biography of a rather major American figure, I recommend it.
Eulogy.......2007-04-22
A close friend looks back with respect and fondness over the long span of the intellectual life of Mr. Kennan, one of our nation's most distinguished diplomats and foreign policy experts. Important insights into the grand history of the Cold War are presented in this short volume. But this, as the author repeatedly states, is in no way a full biography.
A rare (but mild) criticism is expressed by Professor Lukas of Mr. Kennan's written evaluation of a German leader: "...Kennan's admiration for Bismark is unstinting. He esteems and defends the German chancellor throughout." (p. 171) This can be as well said of this book's near deification of George Kennan.
While I admire Professor Lukas' previous work, I do think he is too blindingly close to his subject for objectivity. My case for this view is made when Professor Lukas closes by linking the greatness of this American life, by a direct allusion, to that of Abraham Lincoln's: "Now he belongs to the ages."
Book Description
What is history and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft, as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today. Gaddis points out that while the historical method is more sophisticated than most historians realize, it doesn't require unintelligible prose to explain. Like cartographers mapping landscapes, historians represent what they can never replicate. In doing so, they combine the techniques of artists, geologists, paleontologists, and evolutionary biologists. Their approaches parallel, in intriguing ways, the new sciences of chaos, complexity, and criticality. They don't much resemble what happens in the social sciences, where the pursuit of independent variables functioning with static systems seems increasingly divorced from the world as we know it. So who's really being scientific and who isn't? This question too is one Gaddis explores, in ways that are certain to spark interdisciplinary controversy. Written in the tradition of Marc Bloch and E.H. Carr, The Landscape of History is at once an engaging introduction to the historical method for beginners, a powerful reaffirmation of it for practitioners, a startling challenge to social scientists, and an effective skewering of post-modernist claims that we can't know anything at all about the past. It will be essential reading for anyone who reads, writes, teaches, or cares about history.
Customer Reviews:
The Theory of why we write hsitory .......2007-09-18
Gaddis takes an interesting look at how historians have developed the methodologies that make up history. This is an extended survey that considers aspects of biography and the natural sciences. While at times his comparisons can be a stretch there is useful information to be gleamed from this book. First let me start off by saying that this is only for those who really want to look at the philosophical side of why historians write about history. This is not necessarily a book on the how but it explores the perspectives that historians find themselves writing on throughout the course of their works. The comparisons to natural science are either a cry for a more streamlined system of causality or a plea for historians to look at the causal relationships of events. One of the more interesting points Gaddis makes is the idea that historians work backwards to write forwards. We take events that happen in the past and work backwards to find out how they occurred but we present them for our reader in a chronological cause and effect scenario. Overall this is interesting theory but the book wanders too much and really the things he discussed could easily have been said in 75 pages and not 150.
Mapping the Past.......2007-07-26
Gaddis is a giant in the field of history, most notably for his exhaustive studies on the Cold War. What he attempts to do here is give a detailed, scientific description of how the historian does what he does. Contary to some of the other reviewers, I did not find this an easy read. More on that in a minute, first I'll say what I did glean from the book. Gaddis starts off comparing the historian to a geographer. Much like a map-maker is incapable of mapping a large area of terrain while standing on that terrain, a historian cannot accurately describe an event if they are involved in it. You must be outside it, or above it to get all the perspectives and deliver an objective view of the overall situation. This section was good.
Gaddis also tries to argue that history is more of a scientific process than many people realize. In fact, he claims that the historical method has more in common with that of a geologist, physicist, or paleontologist than a social scientist. To argue this point, he uses an array of scientific jargon, analogies, and metaphors. He writes as if he is trying to convince a scientist of the scientific validity of the historian's craft. In fact I read that this book is essentially an expansion of some speeches he gave to science students, attempting to do just that. This is why I had some difficulty with the book. I have virtually no science background and therefore found much of the scientific jargon to be over my head. For Pete's sake, one of the reasons that I'm a history major is because I'm no good at science! Anyway, I do not dispute Gaddis' knowledge or talent in his chosen field, that is not an issue. But I would just offer the warning that if you are not reasonably well-versed in basic scientific concepts, this book will be a challenge. Needless to say, those with a basic understanding of science will no doubt get much more out of this book than I did.
More Defense than Method.......2007-04-04
I've looked at over a dozen books to try and find a good, solid guide for my students to they can have a foot up on thinking historically. Gaddis book is more philosophy and comparisons with social and natural science than it is a book describing historical theory and method. Perhaps I run in my accepting circles but I've never had to defend my historical work or my department against attacks from social or natural scientists; we realize that every discipline has it's own way of gathering, analyzing and using information. By and large this book seemed like a apologia than a guide for historians. While it was a interesting read for me, I firmly believe it would confuse most undergraduates making the audience for this book much more narrow than I had hoped.
must read for the historically minded.......2006-07-06
John Lewis Gaddis has done all who read or make history a great service with his reflections on history: what it is and is not, its limitations, its purposes, its biases. As someone who gets paid for producing historical studies, I found this book particularly helpful with its insights. There are very few jarring notes--the worst being that Gaddis says he agrees with postmodernists that "all our bases for evaluating behavior [i.e. making moral judgments] are themselves artifacts of behavior." Ignore this bit of confusion and enjoy the rest, which is eminently lucid. I particularly liked his comparing what the historian does to what a cartographer does in making a map: first, choosing what landscape to depict, what the emphases will be, and what to leave out. I also liked his comparison of history as a discipline with sciences like paleontology, geology, and astronomy--where experiments cannot be conducted except in the mind. Overall, a significant book; highly recommended.
a unique glimpse into the mind of a master historian.......2006-05-24
A brief, but entirely enjoyable book on the craft of history. John Lewis Gaddis's book is really a collection of speeches he gave during a visiting professorship at Oxford. The speeches center on the art and science of historical research. He challenges the view held by many social scientists that downplay historians as storytellers whose craft lack the rigor of the scientific method. Gaddis claims that the historical method is more complex that most realize and that historians have more in common with evolutionary biologists and astronomers than economists and political scientists. Despite the academic nature of the subject, the chapters are very readable, since they were written as speeches. The only downside was his attempts at pop-culture humor in an attempt to seem hip to the Oxford audience. A man of his standing in the field of Soviet history has nothing to prove to a bunch of British 19-year olds.
Nevertheless, the book offers a unique glimpse into the mind of a master historian. Good history reads easily, with beautiful narrative, deep research, and thought-provoking analysis. This Gaddis book describes how complex the process can be. It made me appreciate first rate history even more.
Average customer rating:
- The Lives within Lives of Anthony Blunt.
- Utterly Fascinating
- Why did the author knock author John Costello?
- The eternally forgiving English establishment
- Definitively well researched and written bio
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Anthony Blunt: His Lives
Miranda Carter
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Similar Items:
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My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy
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The Private Life of Kim Philby: The Moscow Years
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Deceiving the Deceivers: Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess
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The Untouchable
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Cambridge Spies
ASIN: 0374105316 |
Book Description
The first full biography of the notorious spy—
and an X-ray of the British ruling class that produced him.
Once an untouchable member of England's establishment—a world-famous art historian and a man knighted by the Queen of England—in a single stroke Anthony Blunt became an object of universal hatred when, in 1979, Margaret Thatcher exposed him as a Soviet spy.
In Anthony Blunt: His Lives, Miranda Carter shows how one man lived out opposing trends of his century—first as a rebel against his class, then as its epitome—and yet embodied a deeper paradox. In the 1920s, Blunt was a member of the Bloomsbury circle; in the 1930s he was a left-wing intellectual; in the 50s and 60s he became a camouflaged member of the Establishment. Until his treachery was made public, Blunt was a world-famous art historian, recognized for his ground-breaking work on Poussin, Italian art, and old master drawings; at the Courtauld Institute he trained a whole generation of academics and curators. And yet even as he ascended from rebellion into outward conformity, he was a homosexual when homosexuality was a crime, and a traitor when the penalty was death.
How could one man contain so many contradictions? The layers of secrecy upon which Blunt's life depended are here stripped away for the first time, using testimony from those who knew Blunt well but have until now kept silent and documents from sealed Russian archives, including a secret autobiography Blunt wrote for his controllers. Miranda Carter's Anthony Blunt is the first full biography of the mythical Cold War warrior, and is at once an astonishing history of one the century's greatest deceits and a deeply nuanced account of fifty years in the British power elite, as experienced by one deep inside who wished to bring it down.
Customer Reviews:
The Lives within Lives of Anthony Blunt........2005-03-17
Miranda Carter has written a splendid book about Anthony Blunt, appropriately subtitled, "his lives." Reading about the Cambridge Fellow, Soldier, Double Agent, Art-Historian, Director of the Cortauld Institute, Surveyor of the King's/Queens Pictures, etc., etc., is like peeling an onion, or perhaps--more appropriately--opening a Russian Matrioshka doll. As one probes into a deeper layer one discovers yet another persona, and although one might begin to understand Blunt's motives, one never really gets to know who he really was, thanks to his ability to compartmentalize his multifarious activities and interests.
Although I began the book with considerable prejudice, since Anthony Blunt seems to have prospered while his fellow Cambridge spies were living comparatively miserable lives in Moscow, Ms. Carter's sensitive portrayal of this man, whose aloofness stemmed from a fundamental insecurity, changed my mind. She shows us a man who was unwavering in his ideals and loyal to his friends (He waited until 1964--after Guy Burgess had died and Philby and Maclean were 'safe' in Moscow-- to admit his complicity.). She also portrays a tormented man, whose ability to lose himself in his art-history scholarship preserved his sanity and probably saved his life. Publicly disgraced in 1979, stripped of his knighthood and other honors (after a promise of immunity), deserted by all except a few loyal friends, he died soon after. Miranda Carter depicts him as a man who was courageous but tragically flawed.
This book is meticulously researched, so much so that an average enthusiast of espionage literature may find himself adrift among the dozens of friends, acquaintances and enemies whom Anthony Blunt knew, not only Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and the other Cambridge spy protagonists, but also literary figures, including Julian Bell, Louis MacNeice, W.H. Auden; and other characters--who have come in for their own share of speculation--Victor Rothschild, Michael Straight and Goronwy Rees. Precisely because of the plethora of names, the book presents a fascinating glimpse into a fifty-year history of Great Britain from the 1920's onward. And while probably only the most passionate art historians will read every word about Nicholas Poussin and Baroque Rome, the persistent reader will be rewarded by a colorful and witty glimpse into the outrageous life and times of Guy Burgess (Inexplicably no one has written a biography of the wayward spy, but if they do, it should probably be called "My Noisy War"!).
For those afficionados who cannot get enough of the Cambridge Spies (Judging from the numbers of books still being published about them, half a century later, such readers are numerous.), this book is highly recommended!
Utterly Fascinating.......2004-02-09
Anthony Blunt was a child of the British Establishment, born to a middle class family with Church of England and royal connections. He received a fine education at Marlborough and Cambridge and became one of the most acclaimed art historians and teachers in Britain in the twentieth century. At the same time, he was a spy for the Soviets. The story of how Blunt became a communist, worked against his country while supposedly serving it in MI5 during World War II, then became a courtier for two monarchs and the highly regarded head of the Courtald Institute, which he made into one of the finest art schools in the country, is fascinating.
Blunt was a man of many contradictions. At the same time he stood at the side of the Royal Family as the Surveyor of their art collection he was leading a secret gay life notorious for its seaminess. While he appeared to be a pillar of the Establishment he gave secret information to the Soviets and became the long sought after Fourth Man who was in league with Burgess, Maclean, and Philby before they defected to Russia. When he was unmasked in the 1960s the British government did its own contradictory little dance around him, granting him immunity while pumping him for information.
Miranda Carter is sympathetic to Blunt and emphasizes his positives, like his fine teaching abilities and helpfulness to many of his students, but without whitewashing his treasonous activities. She helps us understand the pressure Blunt was under for many years and the fear of being unmasked that dominated him until he was finally publically denounced in 1979. Above all, she does a fine job of depicting the man's numerous contradictions. Highly recommended.
Why did the author knock author John Costello?.......2004-01-27
Carter wins on giving us numerous minutia about Blount's life and his odd selection of friends. But her book was not of great interest to a reader who was aware of Blount's peculiar nature and interest in art. It is difficult to understand how Blount or his friends, seemed completly oblivious of politics as Carter has laid out. Unless she is making the case that Blount was the perfect mole - at all times on guard against exposure. But I don't think she is trying to make that case.Carter gives us a blur of names, quotes, and a failure to find mention of expected comments in corresspondence such as the passing of Blount's father. It may be Carter's intention to show Blount's world as an extremely focused life which was hardly influenced by outside events; such as the end of World War One and the rise of Communism. I suspect Carter is trying to explain Blount as a Good Boy Who Does Bad Things.
The eternally forgiving English establishment.......2003-04-11
What is the purpose of this account of the life of Anthony Blunt, the great traitor?
This biography is a long emollient salve applied to Blunt's traitorous and murderous life. Its strengths are all associated with its depiction of the milieu in which he moved so effortlessly, the upper class institutions of England which he betrayed.
The author, a product of St. Paul and Oxford, is an excellent writer and an indefatigable researcher. Her style is mellow and balanced--her analysis subtlely and consistently biased in favour of Mr. Blunt. The only time her mellifluous prose veers into ascerbity is when referring to Mr. Blunt's detractors, including Brown, Deacon, and the various former KGB operatives who have written memoirs. Their opinions, Ms. Carter assures us, are unreliable, badly researched, poorly judged, and so on.
But not to worry--Ms. Carter does have the facts, and, she assures us, the proper perspective on Blunt's actions. Despite her many portentuous references to KGB archives, most of her research is based upon secondary sources, a great deal of which is journalism, and on interviews with people to whom she gained access no doubt because of her social background and elite education.
And these sections of the book are indeed fascinating: Ms. Carter refers authoritatively to climates of opinion in the English upper classes that allegedly prevailed during periods before she was born. Her account sometimes reads like it was written by a contemporary of Anthony Blunt's, one with a remarkably benevolent attitude towards the traitor. This authenticity of tone is a testament to Ms. Carter's long years of research and her supple and even-tempered prose. It is also a testament, however inadvertant, to the tolerant, clubby upper class climate which allowed a traitor like Blunt to flourish for so long.
On the surface, the purpose of this book is to present a balanced judgment on the life and deeds of Anthony Blunt. Its rhetoric is indeed a model of moderate, even-tempered balance. But that is not the character of the book, nor is a balanced account its true purpose. What this book actually represents is an example of what it sets out to document--the extraordinarily forgiving attitude of the English upper classes to the Cambridge spies who betrayed their country.
It can only be hoped that its appealing surfaces will not persuade the public to accept this Blunt biography as anything other than an all-too-refined case of special pleading on behalf of a cunning, unrepentent, and all-too-refined traitor to his country.
Definitively well researched and written bio.......2003-04-04
Miranda Carter has been justly acclaimed for producing a biography on Anthony Blunt that cuts through all the weird and assorted myths that have attached to him over the years since the revelations of his spying were made public. This book is richly rewarding as it connects the many lives of this very private public figure. Blunt is a complex personality and it took thorough research and the skill of a good writer to fully appreciate and capture these many and varied layers. The examination into the world of academia and art history was particularly well done and held the interest of this reader. I picked up this book because of the spying details but, to my surprise, found myself as riveted by all the other aspects of this man's live. This book, unlike all the others written about the Cambridge spies, does not come with an axe to grind and it is all the stronger for that abscence. Highly recommended.
Book Description
This collection of essays by twenty-one distinguished American historians reflects on a peculiarly American way of imagining the past. At a time when history-writing has changed dramatically, the authors discuss the birth and evolution of historiography in this country, from its origins in the late nineteenth century through its present, more cosmopolitan character.
In the book's first part, concerning recent historiography, are chapters on exceptionalism, gender, economic history, social theory, race, and immigration and multiculturalism. Authors are Daniel Rodgers, Linda Kerber, Naomi Lamoreaux, Dorothy Ross, Thomas Holt, and Philip Gleason. The three American centuries are discussed in the second part, with chapters by Gordon Wood, George Fredrickson, and James Patterson. The third part is a chronological survey of non-American histories, including that of Western civilization, ancient history, the middle ages, early modern and modern Europe, Russia, and Asia. Contributors are Eugen Weber, Richard Saller, Gabrielle Spiegel, Anthony Molho, Philip Benedict, Richard Kagan, Keith Baker, Joseph Zizak, Volker Berghahn, Charles Maier, Martin Malia, and Carol Gluck.
Together, these scholars reveal the unique perspective American historians have brought to the past of their own nation as well as that of the world. Formerly writing from a conviction that America had a singular destiny, American historians have gradually come to share viewpoints of historians in other countries about which they write. The result is the virtual disappearance of what was a distinctive American voice. That voice is the subject of this book.
Customer Reviews:
The Exception to Real History, or Historiography Gone Awry.......2000-03-30
Responding to what they perceive to be an exceptional"historiographic moment" (p. 17), editors Anthony Molho andGordon S. Wood pool a "highly selective" and "partial" (p. viii) collection of essays on American history-writing in their book Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past. The tangent essays focus on topics of social history, the three centuries of American history, important epochs for western civilization, and a few chapters on other nations, mostly European. However, the threefold axis for spinning such disjointed historiographies into the same volume might possible be defined as follows: (1) a revisionist debunking of Americanism as a teleological historic apex, namely "exceptionalism"; (2) a concerted shift to rewriting history from the viewpoint of the "marginal" and "forgotten" people (p. 11), or the new social history; and (3) an emerging "transoceanic cosmopolitanism" (p. viii), i.e., a growing international perspective among American historians. These three themes as developed by the different contributors to the book and a few brief comments on each will delineate the parameters of this paper. Just say nay to exceptionalism. Rodgers' chapter is the keynote for this major theme of the book. "Is America different?" he begins (p. 21). But then he wrestles with the semantic slide from "difference" to "uniqueness" to "provincialism" to "newness" to "providentialism" to finally "exceptionalism". For him, "exceptionalism differs from difference. Difference requires contrast; exceptionalism requires a rule" (p. 22). This Russian epithet, a "Stalinist coinage of the 1920s" (p. 23) albeit anachronistic according to Rodgers' historical construct (cf. irrelevant colonial "language of eschatology and millennialism"), somehow stuck as witness of American historians' ready adaptation of Marx's "general laws of historical motion" (pp. 25, 27, 28) and the Augustinian "teleological arrow" (p. 31), the content of such "laws" and "arrow" Rodgers does not specify but only assumes, i.e., "general laws" (p. 29; cf. "imagined rules", p. 30). Pejoratives of this exceptionalism abound-"storybook truth" (p. 29), "thin line between history and faith" (p. 26), "exhortation" replacing "analysis" (p. 24)-and, according to the text's contributors, this type of thinking has left its marks on just about every American historiography. Countries like Spain, Japan, and Russia and their "systems" are seen as "antithesis", "Other", "rival", and "challenge" (pp. 329, 340, 416, 417, 450; cf. the absence of America's medieval past, its "alterity" or "otherness", pp. 239, 253) while America is portrayed as the consummation of important westernizing forces, i.e., the Romans as "antecedents of American liberalism" (p. 224), the "nexus between the Renaissance and modernity" in the American Bildung (pp. 264, 267), and the Reformation as the "historical self-definition of so many Protestant churches" (p. 299). Compare the American role in the development of "Western Civilization" (pp. 207ff.), but contrast the difficulty of the revisionists in integrating the French revolution into any exceptionalist framework due to what Baker and Zizek call the constraints of "observational perspective" and "ethnographic distance" (pp. 350ff.). Correspondingly, historians of the colonial period, the nineteenth, and the twentieth centuries contest issues of relevance (p. 157), participation (p. 168), and fragmentation (p. 185), respectively, while others have given a voice to those who have been excluded by exceptionalism, "especially blacks, Indians, and women" contra "white males" (p. 164), under the themes of race (see p. 108), gender (see p. 47), economics, immigration (see pp. 120, 131), etc. Clearly, according to the naysayers, the tentacles of exceptionalism are to be found everywhere. The proletariat gets a face. The postmodern undoing of residual exceptionalism falls to the champions of what is dubbed the "new social and cultural history" (pp. 12, 30; cf. the effects on cliometrics, pp. 63-69, and particularly the debate about Time on the Cross, pp. 72-75) or "history from the bottom up" (p. 11, like the Annales school; cf. p. 443), which is supposedly "authentic history" (p. 30). It is really a story about the masses, in contrast to the story of the elite, which is nothing really new (contra Ross, pp. 91ff.; cf. the work of the Russians Kliuchevskii, Kareev, Luchitskii, Rostovtseff, p. 421, the work of Reformation scholars, pp. 299ff., and the consistent trend of people's history in Medieval studies, p. 249), only that more people are writing about it, and American historians think that they have discovered it (see Wood's exaggerations, p. 156), an excellent example of provincial mentality (a la self-contradiction)! According to the new social engineers, it is a story about reversing those "hidden structures of power" (p. 53) in such realms as race, gender, class, and money, an attempt to break down the old scaffolds in order to radically reconstruct modern societal relationships (i.e., Kerber's gender analysis; cf. the excellent assessment by Ross, p. 98). The historical "resurrection" of the proletariat, better a Russian than American accomplishment, spells the deathknoll of American exceptionalism as the teleologically caricatured and eurocentrically warped enterprise is rendered invalid by the mass of voices in protest to the contrary. There really is a world, Horace. The inferred omnipresence (p. 13) of a concatenation of international historiographic voices toward globalization completes the tightening of the hangman's noose on the "old-fashioned unified sense of American identity" (p. 14). Most noteworthy are American collaborations with the French (pp. 361ff.), with Russians, i.e., important gap-filling (p. 431), with the Japanese, i.e., critique of "nationalizing" (p. 445), and especially concerning nagging questions of cosmopolitan moment, predominately from the twentieth century (see pp. 397ff.). However, this worldwide revisionist overthrow of exceptionalism does not at all explain the already existing and quite lengthy cooperation of international scholars in precisely the historical fields upon which exceptionalist thought was founded (see p. 207), namely the classics which are "transnational in character" (p. 222), Renaissance studies, transformed as early as the 1930s by Jewish immigrants from Germany (p. 270), and the Reformation which has always been primary domain for European scholars (pp. 295ff.). Furthermore, the question of identity bashing does not appear to be fully established. Resisters abound, notably in the areas of western civilization ("they flee Eurocentrism only to meet Europe in Samarra," p. 218) and about Spain (which "remains something of an Other," p. 340). The evidence toward global solidarity and a worldwide multiculturalism is not so ubiquitous after all. All in all, Imagined Histories is a good attempt to give momentum to the postmodern debunking of Americanism on the basis of social reconstructionism and multiculturalism, but in the final analysis, these subtle shifts might be accurately described as vacillations not in substance but only in kind, and the overall thrust is best seen as merely straining out the gnat.
Customer Reviews:
A "must-have" guide for history majors and a useful quick-check resource for professional historians, highly recommended........2007-07-08
Written by Robert C. Williams (Vail Professor of History and Dean of Faculty Emeritus, Davidson College) The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History is a reader-friendly guide for aspiring historians of all skill and experience levels. Now in an updated second edition with five new chapters, The Historian's Toolbox covers everything from how to choose a good history topic and write a solid paper, to evaluating primary, secondary, and tertiary historical sources, to format guidelines for credits and acknowledgments, to historical narrative as compared to interpretation or speculation, to even the potentials and abuses of the user-modified website Wikipedia. A "must-have" guide for history majors and a useful quick-check resource for professional historians, highly recommended.
Grand theory and nuts-and-bolts.......2003-07-09
Williams gives instructors and students of history two books in one. Part one is a quick look at some of the big ideas and controversies of the profession. These short chapters on such topics as metahistory and anti-history should provide great fodder for class discussions. Part two on "the tools of history" offers good guidance on researching, writing, and thinking about history. Again, short, provocative chapters should stimulate students to think and talk about the joys and difficulties of doing quality history. I'll assign the book to my next class on historical research and writing. With this book as a guide, students will not write just another term paper; they'll know how to craft a livelier, deeper, and more revealing interpretation of the past.
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