num_pages: 662
description: The aspiration to relate the past "as it really happened" has been the central goal of American professional historians since the late 19th century. In this remarkable history of the profession, Peter Novick shows how the idea and ideal of objectivity were elaborated, challenged, modified, and defended over the last century.Drawing on the unpublished correspondence as well as the published writings of hundreds of American historians from J. Franklin Jameson and Charles Beard to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Eugene Genovese, That Nobel Dream is a richly textured account of what American historians have thought they were doing, or ought to be doing, when they wrote history -- how their principles influenced their practice and practical exigencies influenced their principles."An astute and provocative account of how the historical profession in American has dealt with its founding myth and central norm -- the ideal of objectivity." -- Dorothy Ross
language: English
title: That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession
titlecomplete: That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession
genres: History, American History, Philosophy, Theory, Read For School, Academic, World History, American, Nonfiction, Grad School
ratings_count: 569
series: Ideas in Context
awards: awardedAt: 599644800000
name: Albert J. Beveridge Award
publisher: Cambridge University Press