The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
Two classics of historiography,The Historian's Craftby Marc Bloch (1953) andWhat Is History?by E. H. Carr (1961), have prompted notable cold war historian Gaddis to offer his own abstract of what historians do. Does the methodology of historians captivate readers of popular history? Those sensitive to a historian's attitudes might be intrigued by this disquisition into the "ductwork" installed in every piece of historical writing. In discussing ductwork, the concepts by which a historian selects facts, comprehends time and space, and ultimately presents the past, Gaddis hews to two central tenets: that there is, somewhere, an objective truth in history, and that history is a science. Those ideas have been severely challenged, especially by social scientists enamored of quantitative methods. Gaddis dismisses quantification alone as unworkable and inappropriate and says historians must combine the techniques of many disciplines. A technical but provocative inquiry for sophisticated history readers.Gilbert TaylorCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved