Telling the Truth about HistoryWe have lost our grip on historical truth. Popular films depict subterranean conspiracies that shape historical events and public knowledge of those events. Best-selling narrative histories dissolve the border between fact and fiction, allowing the author's imagination to roam freely. Influential critics dissolve the author herself into one among many sources of meaning, reducing historical knowledge to a series of texts engaged with each other, not with the past. Powerful constituencies call for histories that affirm more than inform. This new book by three of our most accomplished historians engages the various criticisms that have fragmented the authority of historical knowledge. Although acknowledging degrees of legitimacy in the criticisms, the authors launch a pragmatic response that supports the historian, as they put it, in her long climb, notebook computer in tow, up the 300 stairs to the archives in Lyon. Even if historical truth is an ever-receding goal, the effort to approach it, they show, is legitimate, worthy, and governed by agreed-upon rules. And while affirming the claims of women and ethnic minorities to a rightful place in any narrative of American history, the authors insist on the accountability of history. They outline a coherent narrative of the American past that incorporates its multicultural dimension without special pleading. |
From inside the book
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Page 65
... identity . From the end of the eighteenth century onward , personal identity was consequently linked to nationalism and required an elaborate ethnic heritage , even where none had existed be- fore . All at once , seemingly , nations ...
... identity . From the end of the eighteenth century onward , personal identity was consequently linked to nationalism and required an elaborate ethnic heritage , even where none had existed be- fore . All at once , seemingly , nations ...
Page 315
... identity : choice of , 302 history and , 233 narrative and , 235 identity politics , 292 Iggers , Georg G. , 83n Illiberal Education ( D'Souza ) , 275 " imagined community , " 101 immigrants , immigration , 130 , 132-36 education and ...
... identity : choice of , 302 history and , 233 narrative and , 235 identity politics , 292 Iggers , Georg G. , 83n Illiberal Education ( D'Souza ) , 275 " imagined community , " 101 immigrants , immigration , 130 , 132-36 education and ...
Page 317
... identity politics and , 292 political correctness and , 293 postmodernism and , 202 , 275 social history and , 152-59 time and , 71-72 traditionalists and , 293 universities and , 300 Musson , A. E. , 25n Myrdal , Gunnar , 298 Nadel ...
... identity politics and , 292 political correctness and , 293 postmodernism and , 202 , 275 social history and , 152-59 time and , 71-72 traditionalists and , 293 universities and , 300 Musson , A. E. , 25n Myrdal , Gunnar , 298 Nadel ...
Contents
The Heroic Model of Science | 15 |
2 Scientific History and the Idea of Modernity | 52 |
History Makes a Nation | 91 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Telling the Truth about History Joyce Oldham Appleby,Lynn Hunt,Lynn Avery Hunt,Margaret C. Jacob Limited preview - 1994 |
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