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
Results 1-3 of 48
Page 66
... thought . Only as history advanced , he claimed , could humans encounter truth . No one could escape history ; progress depended on rec- ognizing the direction of history and moving with it . Today many of Hegel's ideas are considered ...
... thought . Only as history advanced , he claimed , could humans encounter truth . No one could escape history ; progress depended on rec- ognizing the direction of history and moving with it . Today many of Hegel's ideas are considered ...
Page 67
... thought and acted without passing judgment on those thoughts and actions ? Although historicism prepared the way for relativism , none of the leading figures of nineteenth - century European intellec- tual life embraced either moral or ...
... thought and acted without passing judgment on those thoughts and actions ? Although historicism prepared the way for relativism , none of the leading figures of nineteenth - century European intellec- tual life embraced either moral or ...
Page 276
... thought control rather than tools of analysis because the Cold War politicized all social thought . Of course , the catego- ries of left and right are far older than the Cold War , so battle lines can easily be reestablished along new ...
... thought control rather than tools of analysis because the Cold War politicized all social thought . Of course , the catego- ries of left and right are far older than the Cold War , so battle lines can easily be reestablished along new ...
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 |
Common terms and phrases
absolute American Annales school argued became believed Christian Cold War colonial contemporary critics cultural cultural war Darwin democracy democratic Derrida discipline E. P. Thompson economic eighteenth century ence Enlightenment Europe experience explained Foucault French Revolution Hegel hermeneutics heroic model heroic science historians history of science human ical idea identity ideology imagination industrial inquiry insisted intellectual interpretation Isaac Newton Jefferson knowledge language laws liberal lives Marxism meaning ment meta-narratives methods Michel Foucault model of science modern moral multicultural narrative national history nature Newton Newtonian nineteenth century objectivity past perspective philosophical political Popper postmodernism postmodernist practice progress Protestant Puritans questions realism reality reform relativism religious scholars scientific scientific model scientists secular sense seventeenth century skepticism social history society story struggle theory tion tradition truth truth-seeking twentieth century understanding United universal value-free values Western white Americans women words writing