Rick Perlstein always hoped his book on the
rise of Ronald
Reagan would set off serious debate among scholars and historians. Just not
this debate.
Mr. Perlstein’s new 856-page book, “The
Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan,” which comes out
Tuesday, is proving to be almost as divisive as Reagan himself. It has drawn
both strong reviews from
prominent book critics, and sharp criticism from some scholars and
commentators who accuse Mr. Perlstein of sloppy scholarship, improper
attribution and plagiarism.
The most serious accusations come from a fellow
Reagan historian, Craig Shirley, who said that Mr. Perlstein plagiarized several
passages from Mr. Shirley’s 2004 book, “Reagan’s Revolution,” and used Mr.
Shirley’s research numerous times without proper attribution.
In two letters to Mr. Perlstein’s publisher,
Simon & Schuster, Mr. Shirley’s lawyer, Chris Ashby, cited 19 instances of
duplicated language and inadequate attribution, and demanded $25 million in
damages, a public apology, revised digital editions and the destruction of all
physical copies of the book. Mr. Shirley said he has since tallied close to 50
instances where his work was used without credit.
Mr. Perlstein and his publisher said the
charges are unfounded and noted that Mr. Perlstein cited Mr. Shirley’s book 125
times on his website, rickperlstein.net, where he posted
his endnotes, which include thousands of citations and links to sources.
“The claim of plagiarism doesn’t fly; these
are paraphrases,” Mr. Perlstein said in a phone interview. “I’m reverent toward
my sources. History is a team sport, and references are how you support your
teammates.”
Jonathan Karp, president and publisher of
Simon & Schuster, called the plagiarism charges “ludicrous” and said the
book was ”a meticulously researched work of scholarship.”
Mr. Perlstein, 44, suggested that the attack
on his book is partly motivated by conservatives’ discomfort with his portrayal
of Reagan. Mr. Shirley is president and chief executive of Shirley &
Banister Public Affairs, which represents conservative clients like Citizens
United and Ann Coulter.
But Mr. Shirley and his lawyer contend that
Mr. Perlstein paraphrased original research without properly giving credit. “The
rephrasing of words without proper attribution is still plagiarism,” Mr. Shirley
said in an interview.
The dispute casts a shadow over the release of
“The Invisible Bridge,” which traces Reagan’s political rise and the
transformation of American popular culture from 1973 to 1976. The book, the
third volume in Mr. Perlstein’s expansive history of American politics in the
1960s and 1970s, was greeted with largely laudatory reviews from The New York
Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Simon & Schuster announced a robust first printing of 75,000 copies. A
fourth volume is already under contract.
“Rick Perlstein’s scholarship is impeccable,”
Mr. Karp said. “We think he’s the great popular historian of the next
generation.”
But some commentators are also questioning Mr.
Perlstein’s accuracy and work ethic. In a sharply critical review on the website
Open Letters Monthly, its managing editor, Steve Donoghue, wrote, “Almost
everywhere you look, you find Perlstein neatening and shortening and simplifying
and exaggerating.”
And in a coming review for The Atlantic, Sam
Tanenhaus, a writer at large for The New York Times who also writes for other
publications, wrote that Mr. Perlstein “now finds rumor more illuminating than
fact.” Lamenting the lack of primary sources, he wrote that Mr. Perlstein had
“adopted the methodology of the web aggregator.”
The debate about Mr. Perlstein’s book also
calls into question the growing practice of shifting endnotes out of print books
and onto the web. In what Mr. Perlstein calls “a publishing innovation,” readers
of “The Invisible Bridge” are directed to a trove of digital citations on Mr.
Perlstein’s website.
He and his publisher said they moved the
endnotes online not just to save money — the notes would have made the hardcover
edition unwieldy and expensive at 1,000-plus pages — but also to make his
research more transparent by providing links to the books, newspaper clippings
and news reports that Mr. Perlstein drew on. “I want to expand this idea of
history as a collective enterprise,” he said. “My notion is that people will
read this book with their iPhones open.”
But many academics and publishers remain
uncomfortable with the practice, saying it requires readers to take an extra
step to find a writer’s sources, and that online documentation could be easily
lost. “The concern for me is that the URLs won’t live forever, and future
scholars could be frustrated if they cannot easily find the notes,” said Bruce
Nichols, the publisher of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
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