This is a book that I have been waiting for: a history of historiography. Not just a history of historians but an expansive survey of all producers of history including media. The author comes from a publishing world. He himself is not an historian, but he is surely a polymath since he knows so much.
"Before you study history, study the historian." E.H. Carr (1961)
"Beneath every history, there is another history---there is, at least, the life of the historian." Hilary Mantel (2017)
Because of the vastness of the subject the author says he has to be selective. His main criterion is on the historical writings that he considers the most influential in, well, history.
PREFACE
My approach is generally chronological, but not rigidly so. I offer several main themes: how our accounts of the past come to be created and what happens to them once they have been set down; how the use of sources---from archives to contemporary witnesses and the development of "dumb" evidence (buildings, gravesites, objects) has changed through the centuries, the nature of bias, its failings, and counterintuitively, surprising strengths, as passionate subjectivity in an historian, when combined with talent, can be a blessing; the relationship of historians to government and the demands of patriotism; the role of storytelling and the relationship between narrative and truth.
Chapter One Herodotus or Thucydides
Who deserves credit as the first historian? I vote for Herodotus.
Chapter Two The Glory That Was Rome
From Polybius to Suetonius. I pass on this chapter.
Chapter Three History and Myth
Creating the Bible
Bible comes from the Greek word bible which means "little books." The Bible is an anthology written by more than forty authors, in three different languages, over a period of about 1200 years. It is usually understood that the Bible haas sixty-six books although that is misleading since the various branches of the faith have differences.
The author reminds the reader that the Bible is the bestselling book of all-time and not only that, it is the best selling book each and every year. There are more than 500 translations.
To the modern mind, the so-called Old Testament contains a host of contradictions and impossible events. It borrows from the Code Of Hammurabi. Large sections of the Noah flood story are lifted from the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Mesopotamian epic story written in the eighteenth century BC.
Chapter Seventeen The Wounded Historian
John Keegan and the Military Mind
Keegan is our most acclaimed military historian. All I need to know as I am not generally interested in military history.
Chapter Ten Once Upon a Time Novelists As Past Masters
“Historians: Unsuccessful Novelists”
-H.L. Mencken
“Jane Austen may not discuss the causes of the Napoleonic Wars head-on, but she gives us a profound sense of what it was like to have lived in her times, and that provides the first clue fictions can add to history; they fill in the gaps that formal accounts cannot cover, when what historians call ‘hard evidence’ does not exists.”
From the earliest writing fiction writers have sought to augment our understanding of the past.
In the 18th Century novel writers liked to call their books “histories.” Like Fielding.
While reading this chapter and the discussion of Tolstoy I feel like I should read War and Peace.
The author mentions Edmund Morris’s biography of Reagan, certainly a bold technique by a biographer bringing in a totally fictitious character.
Moscow was empty. Tolstoy P. 274-275
The roll call of historical novelists is long and varied. P. 272
Gore Vidal is a good example.
Chapter Fourteen From the Inside
It is slightly surprising that more books have been written about Napoleon than Jesus Christ and Hitler. P. 406
Whereas Caesar and Napoleon strived to be objective in their memoirs, this was never the intention of Ulysses S. Grant. Classmates nicknamed him “Useless.” Sent to West Point he became quite the horseman. There he was called “Sam”
Grant’s memoir covers 1,231 pages but only a few cover his early days.
Two-thirds of the memoir are taken up with the Civil War.
His account of the Mexican War 1846-1848 in which Mexico lost more than half of its territory is masterful.
Chapter Fifteen The Spinning of History Churchill and His Factory
I didn’t realize that Churchill was so prolific that he was a writing and publishing machine.
Chapter Nineteen Who Tells Our Story?
This is probably the best content in the book—-a survey of black historians.
The author served as the editor of Manning Marable’s biography of Malcolm X, which Marable completed shortly before his untimely death of a rare disease. I once met Professor Marable when he was at Tuskegee. You could tell he was on an upward path which ultimate led to Columbia.
This author really knows his African American historians.
No comments:
Post a Comment