Truth in History - Brossura

Handlin, Oscar

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0674910265 ISBN 13: 9780674910263

Casa editrice: Harvard University Press, 1979

Riassunto

One of the most eminent historians of our time offers here a perceptive guide to the study of history. Truth in History teaches how to read, how to analyze, how to discriminate. It is as helpful to the reader whose history is created daily in the news as it is to the professional historian whose field is in a crisis of disarray.

A Pulitzer Prize winner and mentor for more than a generation of American historians, Oscar Handlin instructs his readers in the fundamentals of his field. He tells us how to deal with evidence, how to discern patterns amid flux, how to situate ourselves in history, and how to recognize where fact shades subtly into opinion. He combines a historian’s knowledge with a historiographer’s breadth and a philosopher’s temperament. He is concerned with a historian’s limitations and with the ways one can operate honestly within those limitations. He brings a full appreciation of the past to his evaluation of what is modern. And while carefully examining recent developments in his discipline, he culls genuine achievements from the trends that confuse originality with true worth.

Handlin everywhere enlivens his discussion with brilliant details. As he pursues broad definitions of history and its uses, he also attends to specific subjects, showing how they bear directly on each other and on his concerns. He deals with Populism, capitalism, laissez-faire, the two-party system, the New History, ethnicity, and roots, treating all with the flair of an accomplished man of letters. Only a scholar of Handlin’s experience and expertise could have brought such a wealth of particular facts to an issue of such general importance: truth in history.

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Product Description

Like scholars in other fields, historians have long occupied themselves in self-justification. In a society which calibrates all measures by a single standard, the proof of scientific worth became relevance, which in turn was interpreted as a search not for truth but for political correctness. In a blistering professional critique of this tendency in academic scholarship, perhaps the first of its kind, Oscar Handlin offers an analysis that, if anything, has grown more pertinent over the past decade. This book will be valuable for sociologists, economists, political scientists, and historians. It is a must read for those who contemplate a life of scholarship in liberal arts.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Harvard University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 1979
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0674910265
• ISBN 13: 9780674910263
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 450
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile