Talk:Ira Berlin

message: Finding the expression of unqualified criticism cited in the current section on James Oakes' criticism of Ira Berlin's Many Thousands Gone rather surprising, I ventured to read the review and was less surprised to find little trace of the sentiment purported here in the actual document.  Oakes' review is largely positive and, while critical of Berlin's treatment of many subjects, especially paternalism, it in no way makes the criticism that Joelrosenblum ascribes to it regarding slavery and capitalism.  The relevant passage, which actually quite clearly states the contradiction between slavery and free market capitalism, is copied below:
Since this review clearly makes a point that is, if anything, in opposition to the one made by Joelrosenblum, and since I think the intent of placing this single book review in such a position of prominence in the article was to continue advancing the views of the user without proper citation, I am deleting this entire section.  This article is not the place to make statements of original research, a point already made quite clearly by Quatloo below.  If Joelrosenblum or other users would like to carry on this debate, a peer-reviewed journal is the appropriate forum.  For the purposes of this article, any mention of controversy should be succinct, fully and properly referenced, and should make reference to the well-developed views of a representative set of many historians in the field, not simply a single, seven-page book review cherry-picked because of an ostensible relationship to the point that a Wikipedia user had in mind before reading it in the first place. StephenECox (talk) 15:42, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Oakes' "Criticism" Section

message: I have posted a more detailed reply to the above at User talk:Joelrosenblum which explains some reasons for my deletion of these passages other than what I construe to be wikipedia protocol.  Beyond the "you-know-little-or-nothing-about-slavery-in-the-U.S-or-how-historians-write-about-it" arguments that I have carefully (?) constructed at the above User talk page, I think the "Controversial Book Passages" section violates aspects of the rules described at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons.  Namely, poorly sourced material which risks charges of Libel (joel rosenblum read the libel article carefully) should be promptly removed.  Apparently some-Jimmy-Wales-guy has said:
:I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons.
Basically previous versions of this article said Ira Berlin has "pro-slavery biases" and I have removed such accusations because I think they are utterly wrong and unsourced and risk legal challenge if Berlin, a living figure, ever gave a damn what was written here.--Bigtimepeace 11:21, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Controversial Book Passages II

message: The Bio section--i.e. the whole article--needs more work.  The last anonymous deletion from 141.151.16.137 was helpful in terms of describing Berlin's most important book but not sounding like a commercial for the man pulled from his university bio page (which the page previously has been).  This page should probably be in line with those of other Organization of American Historians presidents.
--Bigtimepeace 11:21, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: More work to be done

message: Substituted at 19:05, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment