Sinopsis de LA VERDAD SOBRE LA HISTORIA

Entre nosotros, la discusión transcurre fuera del círculo de los historiadores profesionales, que en general no han perdido la fe en su tarea. En los EE.UU. el movimiento contestatario, iniciado en los 70, se desarrolla dentro de la corporación académica: la crítica a la verdad es bandera para asaltar posiciones, desplazar a los viejos, ganar el poder. En ese contexto se ubica este libro, dedicado en parte a problemas generales del conocimiento histórico y en parte a discusiones muy propias del medio académico estadounidense.Las autoras son historiadoras reconocidas. Se formaron en el movimiento de los 70 y su relación con él no es hostil: aprecian las virtudes de la crítica y el escepticismo, pero piensan que se ha llegado demasiado lejos. Han escrito una crítica y un alegato, pero no pretenden demoler al adversario sino comprenderlo e incluirlo en una explicación más amplia, muy clara, lo que en sí supone una reivindicación del oficio.El texto tiene una organización clásica: tres partes, tres argumentos. En la primera -una hermosa síntesis de la historia intelectual de los siglos XVII a XIX- se expone el modelo heroico de la ciencia. En primer lugar, una ciencia capaz de conocer la naturaleza y operar sobre ella; son las leyes del universo mecánico de Newton, y las de la evolución de Darwin. Luego, una visión de la historia de la humanidad; ésta progresa hasta alcanzar la modernidad, diseñada de manera diferente pero coincidente por los grandes sistemas interpretativos: Marx, Weber o Durkheim coinciden en la posibilidad de aprehender la totalidad de la experiencia humana y de establecer una verdad válida para todos. Tercer pilar: la historia explica el desenvolvimiento de una comunidad y la progresiva realización de sus objetivos y valores comunes; explicación y valores se fusionan.Para nuestras autoras, estos tres absolutos han quedado destruidos por la crítica del siglo XX. La democratización académica y política incorporó tantos puntos de vista sobre la historia -los progresistas, los trabajadores, los negros, las mujeres- que el multiculturalismo reemplaza la idea de destino común. La ciencia sufrió primero la crítica de Kuhn -toda verdad lo es dentro de un paradigma, que cambia- y luego la de los historiadores culturales, que examinaron los valores y prejuicios de los científicos. La crítica posmoderna, de Saussure a Derrida, subrayó la autonomía de textos y discursos y cuestionó la existencia de una realidad más allá de ellos.Todo eso es cierto, reconocen las autoras, pero no alcanza para eliminar la aspiración de buscar una verdad razonable: sólo quienes siguen asumiendo el carácter absoluto de la verdad, propio de la ciencia del siglo pasado, creen que ésta se desmorona con cualquier relativización. Afirman que la deconstrucción sin reconstrucción es una irresponsabilidad y proponen un realismo práctico: el saber es una relación entre un sujeto y un objeto; hay distintas perspectivas legítimas, pero finalmente el saber remite a algo que está fuera del sujeto, un objeto del que pueden decirse distintas cosas, pero no cualquier cosa. ¿Quién establece esos márgenes? Hay una cuestión personal, de rigor y probidad; luego, una verdad consensual: en cada época, el conjunto de los historiadores define los márgenes de lo aceptable, de forma flexible como para que puedan emerger nuevas interpretaciones. Se reconocen en esta explicación dos elementos que nuestras historiadoras asumen como valiosos: un escenario público democrático, donde las ideas circulan libremente, y un sujeto racional y autónomo, capaz de conocer. He aquí una hermosa reivindicación, no sólo de este viejo oficio de historiador sino, sobre todo, de los tan manoseados valores de la modernidad.

LUIS ALBERTO ROMERO

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More Pasts Than OneEric Foner Telling the Truth about History by Joyce

Appleby, Lynn Hunt and Margaret JacobNorton, 322 pp, £19.95, August 1994, ISBN 0 393 03615 4

You are invited to read the first quarter of this book review from the London Review of Books. Register for free for immediate access to the entire article, and enjoy 24 hours of access to the entire LRB archive of over 12,500 essays and reviews.

Rarely has the study and teaching of history been the subject of such intense public debate as in the United States today. While America’s now-famous ‘culture wars’ originated in disputes over the teaching of literature – the demand that the canon should be expanded to include works by women and non-whites – history has recently taken centre stage. Assaults by structuralists, Post-Modernists and the like had already undermined many of the discipline’s methodological assumptions. American historians, however, like the public at large, are a resolutely non-theoretical lot. No one much cared when Jacques Derrida questioned the epistemological foundations of historical knowledge, or Hayden White insisted that historical narratives are, in large measure, carefully contrived myths. But when Indians spoiled the quincentenary of 1492 by condemning Christopher Columbus as a mass murderer, not only did the popular press cry ‘foul’, but historians had no alternative but to take notice.

Today, it seems, one can scarcely open a newspaper without encountering bitter controversy over the public presentation of the American past. In recent months, the flying of the Confederate flag over public buildings in the South has inspired marches and countermarches; it even became an issue in the Virginia Senate campaign between Oliver North (who favoured the flag) and Charles Robb (who opposed it). A proposed exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum to mark the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb produced howls of outrage from veterans’ organisations, who charged that initial plans cast the Japanese of the Second World War as innocent victims rather than aggressors. The pressure exerted by these organisations, augmented by the threat of a reduction in Congressional funding, forced the curators to rewrite the exhibition script to highlight Japan’s wartime atrocities and remove documents revealing that in 1945 high military officials had doubted the need for using the bomb.

There has also been controversy over proposed national standards for history education, drawn up with the participation of hundreds of scholars and every major professional association of history teachers. Lynn Cheney, former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has condemned the plan because, among other things, George Washington is mentioned less frequently than Harriet Tubman, who led groups of slaves to freedom before the Civil War. Ms Cheney seems not to appreciate the difference between a set of curricular guidelines and a textbook. Topics mandated under the new standards, for example, include teaching the military strategy of the War for Independence – a ‘standard’ whose fulfilment would inevitably require attention to Washington’s leadership.

Debates over how history should be taught are hardly new, and hardly confined to the United States. Changes in the present always produce changes in the way the past is conceptualised – witness the rewriting of history now underway in the ex-Soviet Union, or South Africa’s efforts to rid school texts and museum exhibitions of justifications for apartheid. The American debate is reminiscent of the recent dispute in Britain, where defenders of traditional political history complained that new standards

included ‘too much Peterloo and not enough Waterloo’. The battle in the United States, however, seems to have achieved a unique level of vituperation and obfuscation. And despite all the talk in popular magazines and instant bestsellers about the educational horrors wrought by politically correct ‘tenured radicals’ who supposedly dominate the universities, the Smithsonian controversy and Ms Cheney’s stance are evidence that attempts to impose a politically-defined view of the past come mostly from the Right.

Telling the Truth About Historyby Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, Margaret C. Jacob

3.2 of 5 stars 3.20  ·   rating details  ·  206 ratings  ·  15 reviews

We 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

Truth by ConsensusBy David A. Hollinger;Published: March 27, 1994

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TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT HISTORY By Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt and Margaret Jacob. 322 pp. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. $25.IS there a truth that historians can tell? Yes, in thunder, answer the authors of "Telling the Truth About History," a confident, breezy account of the historical profession's encounters with post-modernism and multiculturalism. Of course, historians are influenced by their own character and circumstances. But just because nobody can have a God's-eye view of events does not mean that historians are writers of fiction or merely the agents of particular tribes or interest groups. A genuinely diverse community of historians can neutralize the biases

and compensate for the blind spots found in any person or group; the result can be history warranted widely enough to be called true.Those affirmations in this book flow from three distinguished scholars. Joyce Appleby of the University of California, Los Angeles, has worked primarily on 18th- and early 19th-century America; Lynn Hunt of the University of Pennsylvania is a specialist in modern French history, and Margaret Jacob of the New School for Social Research is a historian of science. The three speak in a single voice, in the "I work in the archives" tone of researchers unwilling to leave to theorists the task of explaining to the public the politics and cognitive mission of historians."Telling the Truth About History" is at once a vindication of historical knowledge against skeptical and relativist doubts and a popular history of the process by which these doubts came into being. Central to both aspects of the

book is the concept of absolutism. The "absolute character" of the scientific truth espoused by the Enlightenment "mimicked the older Christian truth," the authors believe; it endowed intellectuals of the modern West with the "heroic" self-conception of an "unprejudiced, dispassionate, all-seeing" investigator ready to defeat superstition, fanaticism and authoritarianism. This persona, they argue, was taken up eagerly in the 19th century by scholars developing the study of history as a profession, some of whom narrated the history of the United States as an unambiguous triumph of the Enlightenment values of freedom, equality and reason. Hence, they conclude, the 20th century inherited "absolutist" images of science, historical scholarship and American national destiny, all of which invited skeptical reassessments in the wake of the complexity of lived experience in laboratories and archives and in the American political arena.

The story of the dethroning of these abso lutisms, as told somewhat melodramatically by these authors, culminates in the post-modernist denial that there can be any historical knowledge at all and in the multiculturalist rejection of a national myth that omitted the contributions and suffering of minorities and women. The authors celebrate these revolts as healthy and necessary steps toward a more accurate and sophisticated understanding of science, history and the United States. But they sensibly lament an extremity they attribute to the legacy of absolutism: Once the old faiths are shaken, chaos reigns. It's all or nothing. We have knowledge or we have a multitude of competing fictions. We have the old patriotic narrative of American progress or we have a host of stories about different groups driven by particularist sensibilities.Pragmatism to the rescue! The critical spirit of the Enlightenment can be reawakened, the authors believe, but

purged of the absolutisms that have so long haunted it. Although Ms. Appleby, Ms. Hunt and Ms. Jacob sometimes speak of presenting a new way of thinking about objectivity that is suitable for a democratic society, they acknowledge in their wiser moments that their "late-20th-century understanding of historical truth" owes much to that venerable defender of science and democracy, John Dewey, and even to ideas "available since the 1860's" in the writings of the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Avoiding the naive expectations that cause many of our problems in talking about historical objectivity, pragmatists understand that all knowledge can be "provisional" even though some of it may conceivably prevail "for centuries, perhaps forever." Pragmatists see truth as emerging from "a consensus of practitioners" in a social process of open struggle waged amid objects real enough to resist some of our interpretations and to confirm others.

These three authors sharpen their pragmatic realism by making good use of the recent work of the philosopher Hilary Putnam, and they rightly insist that a consensus-based theory of truth is more defensible if the group of inquirers is genuinely open to women and minorities. Despite these whiffs of contemporary thought, the doctrinal core of "Telling the Truth About History" is a pragmatic realism long since appreciated by many historians in the United States. Making this pragmatic realism more accessible to the public is the greatest contribution of this book. It will no doubt serve also to help undergraduates majoring in history find their way through the post-modernist debates.It offers less when the authors turn to multiculturalism. Here their admirable effort to update the critical spirit of the Enlightenment loses the sharpness of focus they maintain when they deal with epistemological issues. Their hortatory calls for "an act of national will" to

create a comprehensive narrative of inclusion provide little help in determining the terms on which this inclusion is to proceed. "Only the critical relationship between the whole, with its authority, moral force and material wealth, and each particular group, insistent upon its share, its place and its rights within the whole, can make the multicultural debate intelligible," they insist in a characteristically bland formulation.They attack a complacent, Anglo-centered historiography recounting "the progress of natural rights and democratic governance," which historians have already spent a quarter-century trying to transcend. Perhaps the battle against the old patriotic narrative is never won, but in the guise of a ringing manifesto for a history more responsive to the social diversity of the nation, "Telling the Truth About History" defends what is already the most widely proclaimed of agendas for the telling of the truth about American history.

DrawingDavid A. Hollinger is a professor of history at the University

of California, Berkeley. His books include "In the American

Province: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ideas."

Telling the Truth about HistoryJoyce Appleby, Author, Margaret C. Jacob, With, Lynn Hunt, With

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Three historians here team up for a worthy, demanding foray into the battle over the academy, taking on ``both the relativists on the left and the defenders of the status quo ante on the right.'' The authors argue that skepticism and relativism about truth, in science, history and politics, stems from the

democratization of American society and higher education. They survey the ``heroic model'' of science produced in the Enlightenment, the roots of relativism in Hegel, and the influence of Marx, Durkheim and Weber on latter-day historical schools. They tackle the virtuous mythologies of American history, and critiques by progressives like Charles Beard and post-WW II social historians. They also cite 1960s historians of science who launched politicized critiques and postmodernists who attacked claims of objectivity. The authors urge historians to have a ``stronger, more self-reflexive and interactive sense of objectivity.'' In a final chapter addressing ``political correctness'' and multiculturalism, the authors sensibly call for a middle ground,

but diminish their message with a paucity of models. Appleby teaches at UCLA, Hunt at the University of Pennsylvania and Jacob at Manhattan's New School for Social Research. (Apr.)

I found this book to be one of the most valuable and most hopeful books I have read in a long time. As a High School teacher of American history, I have long grappled with the question of historical truth and how best to teach it to students. I have also wondered if I could justify my own profession, since American history instruction so often seems to be simply political indoctrination in one form or another. This book gave me hope that my efforts are not in vain. The book traces the evolution of history from the enlightenment model of scientific history through postwar issues of postmodernism and relativism;. and the authors persuasively argue that historical truth is possible, even if not absolute. The book is not light reading - I was not able to race through the book, but had to wade through it, so to speak. However, I do feel the book is well worth reading. It is well written, balanced and fair-minded, and it transcends the simplistic conservative-liberal debate over the teaching of history. I feel the book should be read by everyone who is concerned with the teaching of history or the question of historical truth.

 Well Intentioned But Flawed, January 7, 2008By R. AlbinThis review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)Written by three distinguished historians, this is a well intentioned but only partly successful effort to develop a systematic approach to historical truth. The authors open with a set of historiographic chapters covering the development of history as a discipline since the 18th century. This is a generally concise and nice precis of the importance of the natural sciences as a model of inquiry, the idea of history of a teleological and progressive model of modernity, the development of secular and nationalized professional history in the 19th century, and especially the emergence of a strong and rather distorted triumphalist

historical narrative about the USA. This is followed by some good descriptions of how this tradition then began to run into problems. The somewhat "heroic" model of scientific history became its own form of dogma, and with the Progressive era, serious doubts aroase about the 19th century triumphalist model. The authors are also justly and conventionally critical of naive positivist views of historical explanation.

This is generally well done, though the need for concision may have led the authors to some incomplete and inaccurate statements. For example, the authors' facile attribution of late 19th century racism as the inadvertant consequence of Darwin's theory ignores the substantial contribution of influential non-Darwinist thinkers like Gobineau and Agassiz. Similarly, the authors' discussion of 19th century historiography ignores the fact that the greatest 19th century American historian was the disenchanted Boston Brahmin Henry Adams. Adams' work is a sustained and brilliantly written presentation of history as irony.

The authors really go astray in the middle of the book with their chapter "Discovering the Clay Feet of Science." This is a description of the misleading nature of the "heroic" model of science and how this "discovery" provoked an intellectual crisis. I don't doubt the authors' assertion that this was a major issue in the community of historians, but the authors' implication that this was a general intellectual crisis is fairly silly. As the authors point out, one of the major features of academic life in the last 50 years is the enormous expansion of universities and the democratization of access to a university education. The authors seem to be unaware that the other great change in universities over that last 2 generations is the enormous expansion and investment in the natural sciences. At my large research university, a majority of the faculty are in the natural sciences or related fields like Medicine or Engineering. In terms of funding, the natural sciences are even more dominant. The discoveries the authors that authors see as uncovering the clay feet of science had no effect on natural scientists or the university administrators who hire them. The suggestion that the writings of a few historians of science or literary critics provoked a general intellectual crisis is hyperbole. THe authors make a similar series of inaccurate claims about the Cold War, which they see as producing "distortions" of science. While there were real problems with Cold War administration of science, the fact is that rivalry with the Soviet Union was one of the factors that turned the Federal government into the major patron of American science. The Cold War was partly responsible for the enormous progress made by American science in the last 50 years.

Because the authors exaggerate the effects of historical revision of scientific progression, they similarly exaggerate the importance of post-modernism/deconstructionism. The authors characterize this movement

correctly as an intellectual deadend. But the amount of attention and number of pages devoted this is essentially inconsequential movement is wholly out of proportion to its actual importance.

The authors positive contribution is an attempt to define an approach to history they call "practical realism." The authors have a good discussion of the problems with establishing truthfulness and causal relationships in historical analysis. Their recommendation, epistemically based on Peirce's fallibalism, is a modestly realist approach based on careful accumulation of data, constant testing of defined hypotheses, skepticism about data, peer review, and a community of scholars open to alternative interpretations. If this sounds familiar, its because it is. Its essentially a version of the best practices of modern science. This is crashing through an open door with a vengeance. As an aside, the authors contrast their position with the "metaphysical realism" of Karl Popper and his logical positivist "associates." Popper would be surprised to find himself grouped with the Vienna Circle philosophers of whom he was so critical. In fact, Popper's work has a strong fallibalist orientation with strong kinship to Peirce's work.

The authors also get themselves into trouble with some fairly careless statements. For example, "the exclusive dominance of European cultural forms in the United States in now consignable to a specific period,..." This from authors whose recommended approach to historical analysis is a clear mimic of western scientific practices and based on a philosophical approach articulated by a 19th century American man. Fallibalist epistemology is based on the work of several imporant 17th and 18th century European philosophers and has roots in Hellenistic Greece. This is about as European as it gets. I don't see the authors recommending nor would they recommend authentic non-European approaches like Theravada Buddhism or Confucianism.

Finally, the authors would like a form of American national history suitable for a democratic society. What does this mean? The authors are appropriately critical of instrumental uses of history like the triumphalist version of 19th century America and they are cautious about the dangers of making the same types of error in things like 'Afrocentric' history. So what is their solution? They are not completely explicit but it appears they wish a systematic, accurate, unbiased account of the past that is fair to the historical experiences of all relevant actors, a kind of inclusionary multiculturalism. But how is this different from naive positivism?Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you?   Report abuse | Permalink

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Initial post: Jun 24, 2010 2:02:59 AM PDTBlikker says:

Impressive.Reply to this post

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Posted on Dec 27, 2012 9:00:24 PM PSTGuillelmus says:

It is altogether unfortunate that natural scientists have failed to discern the sedimentary nature of their feet, as this would undoubtedly greatly assist the progress of science with a more rigorous application of that most esteemed of methods. As it is, too many scientists remain wedded to a set of inherited and uncritically evaluated assumptions that hold them back from pushing their discoveries further, faster. Thank goodness for those scientists -- sadly all too few -- who truly understand the nature of the post-modern challenge and its implications for advancing scientific research and evaluating the current state of knowledge from a more nuanced perspective.Reply to this post

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Posted on Aug 23, 2014 9:06:33 AM PDTCarol Ockey Katt says:

After the first sentence, I knew you were not used to women's writings, and your comment explains that you don't have the Women's Studies criteria to understand what the women are writing. I'll go out on a limb and say you don't value women's studies enough to value it is much as, say, Great Man, Social History's beginnings, and annals. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the book..Reply to this post

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In reply to an earlier post on Aug 23, 2014 9:48:14 AM PDT

R. Albin says:I'm not sure that I understand your comment. This is not a "Women's Studies" book or explicitly feminist critique but an effort at general historiography. I suggest you re-read this book. The criteria I used to judge this book is essentially the "practical realism" they authors advocate for making historical judgements. As for not being used to women's writings, I haven't read any of Appleby's books, but I've read several of Jacob's books and one book she co-wrote with Hunt. Jacob, in my opinion, is one of the best historians of the Enlightenment and her writings on the origiins of the Industrial Revolution basic for understanding one of the most important phenomena in human history.

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful4.0 out of 5 stars Don't know much about History..., January 3, 2007By G. Stucco "mr guido" (usa) - See all my reviews(REAL NAME)   This review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)The book argues that various types of absolutisms (political, intellectual, or ideological) have been dethroned. Ever since the "heroic model of Science" (which in the past centuries enjoyed an aura of absolute validity) has been shown to be less than "perfectly objective," a struggle has ensued to fill the vacuum in the interpretation of history.

On one extreme we find the radical projects of the so-called De-constructionism, championed by Derrida and Focault (mutually exclusive projects, by the way), claiming that the human subject is a fiction and that all attempts to retrieve meaning and valid interpretation from the past are doomed to fail, especially when we try to derive lessons for the future. These philosophers want to deconstruct the notion of the individual as an autonomous, self-conscious agent; to de-center the subject, his primacy as a location for making judgements and for seeking the truth. Human beings are hopelessly caught in the prison of language. They attack "logocentrism," namely the idea that words express the truth of reality. Thus, the direction taken by postmodernism leads to relativism and to nihilism. Putnam, in his Renewing Philosophy, p. 133, claims that "deconstruction without reconstruction" amounts to irresponsibility; this is true, I may add, if one embraces methodological skepticism rather than dogmatic skepticism, which is instead what the deconstructionists are doing. Apparently, Putnam's critique misses the

mark.The other extreme is represented by Traditionalism, "fixed" in its classicism and in a hopeless resistance to what is known today as "multiculturalism". The authors blame the traditionalists for lumping together multiculturalism, postmodernism and social history, and for resisting a process that the authors call the "democratization of the university." The authors contend that this process has exposed the racist, sexist, homophobic and Eurocentric roots of contemporary historiography. (Bloom and Hirsch scoff at this process, and remain angry at "tenured radicals" and at the "philistine critics.")The position advocated by the authors is Pluralism and Multiculturalism (heavily influenced by Historicism). The authors call for a "democratic practice of history", for "practical realism" (that somehow embraces the correspondence theory of truth). They also argue in favor of Truth and Objectivity, though not in the traditional, fixed perspective and against what they call a "debilitating relativism." They seek for a qualified objectivity; no research is neutral, since knowledge involves struggle amongst various groups of truth-seekers ("Objectivity does not require taking God's perspective, which is impossible"). The authors claim that we need to come to terms with subjectivity, artificiality and language dependence. Against post-modernists, they argue that an inquiring mind is an operative tool: the past exists and we must try to reconstruct it, since it is knowable and real. What we need is methodical skepticism. They recall the words of Diderot: "All things must be examined, all must be winnowed and sifted without exception and without sparing anyone's sensibilities." (s.v. "Encyclopedia") and again: "The follower of the Enlightenment is an eclectic, skeptic investigator who trampling underfoot prejudice, tradition, venerability, universal assent, authority - in a word, all that overawes the crowd - dares to think for himself, to ascend to the clearest general principles, to examine them, to discuss them, to admit nothing, save the testimony of his own reason and experience. (s.v. "Eclecticism")". The authors talk about the tradition of Marxist historiography; of the French Annales School, which in the 1950s and 1960s paid attention to three layers: 1) Climate, geography, biology; 2) Social structures and patterns; 3) Politics, culture and intellectual life. This "history from below" pays little attention to what traditionalists care about (statesmen, generals, diplomats, intellectuals, ideas and institutions) in favor of social history, the history of workers, servants and the poor.

As far as I am concerned, in choosing the way to study and to teach History to my students and children, I will purposely ignore and neglect a) Social history (with its emphasis on ordinary people); b) Economic history (emphasis on how economic forces work); but focus and celebrate c) History of Ideas. Ideas and views shape the world and the course of events; everything else is secondary to me and not of much interest.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars, January 3, 2015By Sara Cardenas - See all my reviewsVerified Purchase(What's this?)This review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)Love my product. Fast shipping!Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes NoReport abuse | PermalinkComment Comment

7 of 14 people found the following review helpful4.0 out of 5 stars Historical joy ride, July 13, 2002By Brett Williams (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews(REAL NAME)   Verified Purchase(What's this?)This review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)Well written with ample empirical examples and insights most of us would never consider. This book is for anyone interested in tracing Western perspectives from the emergence of reason under the thumb of ignorance and dogma, through the advent of science, to muddlings of our present era returning to ignorance and dogma under the confines of censorship and totalitarian Political Correctness.Driving forces that made America and the West what it became are surveyed - forces including the birth of reason, influence of science and our Western notion of progress. Focused on their topic, our authors properly consider what matters most to America and the West, excluding a vast array of other cultures because those cultures (Mayan, Hutu, Chilean, Eskimo - a virtually endless list) have little or absolutely nothing to do with Western development. Thus we are saved from useless inclusion of irrelevance. Nor do they waste trees on a cacophony of "voices" with something opposing to say about the facts of history as though their intent is to produce committee minutes. Noted, repeatedly,

are oversights and outright suppression of females as bared from the men's club, but it is treated as a fact of history, not a call to arms.Results of these forces included exaltation of history and "heroic science" as a means of positive reference for America (and Europe) that has since been attacked by factions wishing in part to make history's picture larger while reinventing history in ways that deny credit for anyone but their own group. It requires imagination, but the authors clarify how successful Postmodernist relatives have been in advancing the most ridiculous ideas, and, as noted, would not be given a second thought were they not becoming so dominant at our universities. Ideas such as; We invent theories in science, we do not discover them; What was not said or not written is more important than what was - as everyone in every period is said to have been political and fully so with no regard for truth. Thus whatever point was made was in fact a diversion hiding what they "really" meant. This brings to bear creative talents of our finest historians and "text interpreters" as they expend lifetimes inventing, out of thin air, what the truth "really" was. A boundless exercise as what was not spoken or written remains infinite, while what was is limited. And such conclusions from those who paradoxically preach "the truth is, there is no truth, and that's the truth".Thankfully the authors state the obvious. "Relativism, a modern corollary of skepticism" not only reasonably questions but is now used to promote doubt in knowledge of any kind, while to the contrary our authors argue "truths about the past are possible, even if they are not absolute". For those who claim we can know nothing, and that even our theories of nature are pure, politicized imagination, we are reminded that artifacts exist - remains of civilizations, buildings, monuments, graveyards on battlegrounds, movements resulting from written words and speeches. As for inventing scientific theories as simply another false Western bias, one may wonder how all those atoms and galaxies know our political views well enough to behave precisely as predicted by theory.The authors commit the error of confusing science with scientists - science being an ideal, while scientists remain human - and they wrongly promote a reference which claims the defense industry as dominated by scientists when it is rather dominated by engineers. This offering to reinforce a notion that science is political. (Indeed, scientists may be.) With an open mindedness bordering on mere "inclusivity" Postmodernists are given limited credit, stating they "deserve" to be heard on some matters - which left me wondering why serious historians would squander time on sophomoric reflections of declining education and trite exercises in sensitivity toward the absurd. We might consider the notion of a moon made of green cheese still holds promise if a certain vast system of conditions concerning our measurements and conceptions exist - say that we are in fact being manipulated by aliens. But any advancement in our understanding of the human condition is bound to be wasted. As a German engineer once said, "I have no time to

waste on probable failures." So why waste it?An assumption is made from the outset - common to anyone's era, which is not challenged - that the past was incorrect in their perspective. Perhaps we are wrong in refuting their positivism. Instead we assume without question the heroic models were flawed. Despite what we consider the past's delusions and narrow mindedness, we are never offered an option that their perspective, though incomplete, was superior to our own in which winners at the auction are those with the most terrible things to say about who we are. Perhaps the authors saw this as too "inclusive" and a probable failure.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes NoReport abuse | PermalinkComment Comment

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read and great teaching tool, November 6, 2013By Linda M. - See all my reviewsVerified Purchase(What's this?)This review is from: Telling the Truth about History (Norton Paperback) (Kindle Edition)Great book for teaching historiography and a real "manifesto" for writing history that is inclusive and deals with the intersectional issues (gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion) that had been ignored by "professional" historians until about thirty years ago. Wonderfully--and seamlessly--written despite the three authors.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes NoReport abuse | PermalinkComment Comment

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful3.0 out of 5 stars reads easily ,but is a "popular" book not for historians, April 6, 2010By Avid reader (Jerusalem) - See all my reviewsVerified Purchase(What's this?)This review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)

This is a book by three well known professional historians. Obviously , this book was meant to be a readable introduction to the history of the historical profession and its problems for the unintiated. It falls short for the reader who is already familiar with the major questions raised.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes NoReport abuse | PermalinkComment Comment

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful5.0 out of 5 stars Without Equal, April 21, 2014By T. G. Cline (California) - See all my reviewsVerified Purchase(What's this?)This review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Hardcover)This book is one of the foundational works of Public History and metahistoriographical thought. It's been used in countless history classes, and stands on its own as a seminal work in the field. Absolutely worth reading.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes NoReport abuse | PermalinkComment Comment

16 of 34 people found the following review helpful1.0 out of 5 stars Closet conservatives pretending they're liberals, March 7, 2010By Randy J. Robinson - See all my reviews(REAL NAME)   This review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)I'm willing to bet every person applauding this book isn't a historian. Historians check facts; that's why history books have to document their sources.

As readers, you may want to know who wrote the book. The three authors of "Telling the Truth about History" are all devout Christians. Not only are they devout Christians, but they're intelligent designers. They believe that science affirms the existence of God, but only Newtonian science (so Darwin doesn't count).

They begin the book by claiming their book is not a polemic against postmodernism. In fact, that's exactly what this book is, and it's not only an attack on postmodernism, it's an attack on social progress in general.

They are horribly flawed with a number of their arguments. Here's a few of their main claims and why they're wrong:

1) "Darwin's theory of natural selection led to racism in Europe." There were a number of other racists writing around the time of European imperialism and the rise of nationalism. Racism was alive and well in Europe long before Darwin. As historians and historiographers, Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob should know about this. They should also know that much of European racism, especially antisemitism, has its roots in Catholic traditions -- not scientific ones. Just read Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" if you need some examples of pre-Darwinian racism.

2) "Nietzsche was an antisemite." The quote of his they use on p. 209 is from "Genealogy of Morals." Had they actually read Nietzsche's book that they pulled this quote from, they would know that Nietzsche was not claiming any of the antisemitic lines that were written. He himself was narrating a story where a herdish fanboy of his work was incorrectly regurgitating Nietzsche's philosophy back at Nietzsche. In other words, Nietzsche was saying anyone who was claiming the Jews were in any way inferior to Europeans was a moron. This is history at its worst: Not only did the authors incorrectly cite Nietzsche, they did it in such a way as to distort his image historically. *This underhanded tactic is exactly what the authors claim they are writing against.*

3) "Science claims absolute knowledge." Western scientists haven't made this claim since the turn of 20th century. (Mid-Eastern and Far-Eastern scientists never made this claim to begin with.) During the early 1900's, physicists were already aware that there were major problems with the Newtonian conception of classical mechanics. After the quantum and relativity revolutions, scientists no longer made claims to absolute knowledge because they knew they could never mathematically demonstrate that events occurred deterministically. Science can only claim what's most probable according to what is already known and documented. Again, as historians, the authors should be acutely aware of these well-known facts.

So, in short, read this book with caution. This is not a scholarly text. This is pop-history masquerading as the intellectual middle-ground; in actuality it is right-wing progpaganda at its "finest."Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

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6 of 24 people found the following review helpful4.0 out of 5 stars I hate this book, yet it is good, March 2, 2002By Jack Hanks (Romney WV) - See all my reviews(REAL NAME)   This review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)I am taking my History capstoneatfor my undergrad and I have to say I hate this book. Appleby, Jacob and Hunt all teach history at UCLA. Not known for it's ultra-liberal persepective. SO they bash the church, white males and consevative historians. THey have done their work and the book is well done. I wish that teachers using this book would show the other persepective of historical progress.

44 of 52 people found the following review helpful2.0 out of 5 stars Well Intentioned But Flawed, January 7, 2008By R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   This review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)Written by three distinguished historians, this is a well intentioned but only partly successful effort to develop a systematic approach to historical truth. The authors open with a set of historiographic chapters covering the development of history as a discipline since the 18th century. This is a generally concise and nice precis of the importance of the natural sciences as a model of inquiry, the idea of history of a teleological and progressive model of modernity, the development of secular and nationalized professional history in the 19th century, and especially the emergence of a strong and rather distorted triumphalist historical narrative about the USA. This is followed by some good descriptions of how this tradition then began to run into problems. The somewhat "heroic" model of scientific history became its own form of dogma, and with the Progressive era, serious doubts aroase about the 19th century triumphalist model. The authors are also justly and conventionally critical of naive positivist views of historical explanation.

This is generally well done, though the need for concision may have led

the authors to some incomplete and inaccurate statements. For example, the authors' facile attribution of late 19th century racism as the inadvertant consequence of Darwin's theory ignores the substantial contribution of influential non-Darwinist thinkers like Gobineau and Agassiz. Similarly, the authors' discussion of 19th century historiography ignores the fact that the greatest 19th century American historian was the disenchanted Boston Brahmin Henry Adams. Adams' work is a sustained and brilliantly written presentation of history as irony.

The authors really go astray in the middle of the book with their chapter "Discovering the Clay Feet of Science." This is a description of the misleading nature of the "heroic" model of science and how this "discovery" provoked an intellectual crisis. I don't doubt the authors' assertion that this was a major issue in the community of historians, but the authors' implication that this was a general intellectual crisis is fairly silly. As the authors point out, one of the major features of academic life in the last 50 years is the enormous expansion of universities and the democratization of access to a university education. The authors seem to be unaware that the other great change in universities over that last 2 generations is the enormous expansion and investment in the natural sciences. At my large research university, a majority of the faculty are in the natural sciences or related fields like Medicine or Engineering. In terms of funding, the natural sciences are even more dominant. The discoveries the authors that authors see as uncovering the clay feet of science had no effect on natural scientists or the university administrators who hire them. The suggestion that the writings of a few historians of science or literary critics provoked a general intellectual crisis is hyperbole. THe authors make a similar series of inaccurate claims about the Cold War, which they see as producing "distortions" of science. While there were real problems with Cold War administration of science, the fact is that rivalry with the Soviet Union was one of the factors that turned the Federal government into the major patron of American science. The Cold War was partly responsible for the enormous progress made by American science in the last 50 years.

Because the authors exaggerate the effects of historical revision of scientific progression, they similarly exaggerate the importance of post-modernism/deconstructionism. The authors characterize this movement correctly as an intellectual deadend. But the amount of attention and number of pages devoted this is essentially inconsequential movement is wholly out of proportion to its actual importance.

The authors positive contribution is an attempt to define an approach to history they call "practical realism." The authors have a good discussion of the problems with establishing truthfulness and causal relationships in historical analysis. Their recommendation, epistemically based on

Peirce's fallibalism, is a modestly realist approach based on careful accumulation of data, constant testing of defined hypotheses, skepticism about data, peer review, and a community of scholars open to alternative interpretations. If this sounds familiar, its because it is. Its essentially a version of the best practices of modern science. This is crashing through an open door with a vengeance. As an aside, the authors contrast their position with the "metaphysical realism" of Karl Popper and his logical positivist "associates." Popper would be surprised to find himself grouped with the Vienna Circle philosophers of whom he was so critical. In fact, Popper's work has a strong fallibalist orientation with strong kinship to Peirce's work.

The authors also get themselves into trouble with some fairly careless statements. For example, "the exclusive dominance of European cultural forms in the United States in now consignable to a specific period,..." This from authors whose recommended approach to historical analysis is a clear mimic of western scientific practices and based on a philosophical approach articulated by a 19th century American man. Fallibalist epistemology is based on the work of several imporant 17th and 18th century European philosophers and has roots in Hellenistic Greece. This is about as European as it gets. I don't see the authors recommending nor would they recommend authentic non-European approaches like Theravada Buddhism or Confucianism.

Finally, the authors would like a form of American national history suitable for a democratic society. What does this mean? The authors are appropriately critical of instrumental uses of history like the triumphalist version of 19th century America and they are cautious about the dangers of making the same types of error in things like 'Afrocentric' history. So what is their solution? They are not completely explicit but it appears they wish a systematic, accurate, unbiased account of the past that is fair to the historical experiences of all relevant actors, a kind of inclusionary multiculturalism. But how is this different from naive positivism?Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes NoReport abuse | PermalinkComment Comments (4)

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!, January 2, 2000By 

Coleman J. Goin "C.J. Goin" (Ganado, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews(REAL NAME)   This review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)I found this book to be one of the most valuable and most hopeful books I have read in a long time. As a High School teacher of American history, I have long grappled with the question of historical truth and how best to teach it to students. I have also wondered if I could justify my own profession, since American history instruction so often seems to be simply political indoctrination in one form or another. This book gave me hope that my efforts are not in vain. The book traces the evolution of history from the enlightenment model of scientific history through postwar issues of postmodernism and relativism;. and the authors persuasively argue that historical truth is possible, even if not absolute. The book is not light reading - I was not able to race through the book, but had to wade through it, so to speak. However, I do feel the book is well worth reading. It is well written, balanced and fair-minded, and it transcends the simplistic conservative-liberal debate over the teaching of history. I feel the book should be read by everyone who is concerned with the teaching of history or the question of historical truth.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes NoReport abuse | PermalinkComment Comment

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful4.0 out of 5 stars Strong responses to criticism of history, July 17, 2001By Edward Bosnar - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)Since this book was written in the wake of the intellectual `wars' at U.S. universities involving multiculturalism, political correctness and the subsequent backlash to these, it primarily focuses on the history profession in the United States rather than worldwide. Thus, some of the book's shortcomings in not dealing adequately with non-American or non-Western European views or concerns can be forgiven. Despite these flaws, "Telling the Truth About History" very successfully addresses the many criticisms hurled at the scholarly pursuit of history in recent decades, and the three authors' conclusions can be useful and edifying even for those historians living and working far beyond America's

borders. In line with the pragmatism and practical realism the authors extol in their last several chapters, they essentially call for a middle ground between the extremes of postmodern relativism and the apparent absolutes of the Enlightenment `heroic science' model. This means not abandoning the pursuit of verity while incorporating many of criticisms and even methods of the postmodernist theorists. Truth may still be elusive as ever (to say nothing of absolute truth) but, as they say at one point, even provisional truths are better than ignorance or outright falsehoods - with a nice example from the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev years to illustrate this point. This is a very well-written and persuasive argument for history as a rigorous and expansive (and mind-expanding) academic discipline. Along the way, the authors also provide a very informative overview of historiography from the Enlightenment era to the present, albeit in a largely American context.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes NoReport abuse | PermalinkComment Comment

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful4.0 out of 5 stars Is History Bunk?, July 22, 2008By Ronald H. Clark (WASHINGTON, DC USA) - See all my reviews(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   Verified Purchase(What's this?)This review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)This book is interesting from a couple of perspectives. First, it was written by three outstanding historians (including Joyce Appleby, a leading colonial historian, and Margaret Jacob, the virtual guru of scientific history) in the late 1990's to repudiate what they saw as a postmodern attack on the integrity of history as a discipline. So there is much disparaging discussion of post-modernism, multi-culturalism, absolurte truth, social history, relativism, cultural history, deconstruction, textualism, etc. I agree with Gordon Wood in his excellent "Purpose of the Past" that from today's perspective, this dimension of the book comes across as somewhat "overanxious and somewhat dated." History as a discipline continues to flourish and explore new areas. This section is really designed for professional historians and those interested in history from the standpoint of epistemology, since it can become somewhat technical, though of substantial value.

The second facet of the book, written as background but occuping about 1/3 of the total text of 309 pages, which I found of greater interest is a fascinating recounting of the development of scientific inquiry, from Bacon and Newton on. Probably due to the involvement of Margaret Jacob, this discussion moves into the linkage of science to history in the cultural wars involving the Enlightenment and the Counter-Reformation. Eventually, the narrative discusses the role of "Protestant science" in American universities; national identity history in the hands of Hegel; and scientific history in the west with Marx, Durkheim and Weber. The competing approaches of Beard and the Progressive historians then enters the stage, leading to social history and the rise of multi-culturalism. In turn, science itself comes under attack and the argument that there is no absolute truth, only relativism, emerges and we are into post-modernism. History becomes a target with allegations that historians have subconscious prejudices, face problems with their methods and very language, and that narrative is destructive as a technique ("history is the western myth"). This obviously is a lot of ground to cover in a couple hundred pages, but the authors do an outstanding job, although this section is really designed to educate the reader for the key discussion to follow, namely historical inquiry remains viable if not perfect.

So the most valuable section of the book may not be that was the focus of the authors' concerns, but that which is preliminary. Nonetheless, a book chock full of interesting insights and ideas, although somewhat dated by today's standards. Unfortunately, it lacks a bibliography, but does have some helpful footnotes as sources for further investigation.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes NoReport abuse | PermalinkComment Comment

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant History of History for non-Historians, February 13, 2009By Ioana Stoica "Ioana Stoica" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)This is a *popular* historiography of history (i.e., don't expect many footnotes or sources). It reviews the history of historical consciousness since the Enlightenment--its initial emergence as a mimicry of Christian-medieval truth-seeking (as applied to the secular: i.e., power of God is transferred to Nature), the subsequent period of "heroic science" (the

rational, "objective", scientific model of history), to the reformers and the birth of social history and the postmodern turn in the 20th century.

Appleby, Hunt and Jacob, outside of giving us an overview of historiography, also attempt here to show how a pragmatic middle ground between a "scientific objectivity" and completely fragmented postmodernism might look as method of doing history. Their thesis: neither extreme works, but both points of views bring valuable contributions to the study of history--and they can and should be used to complement each other. We cannot lose sight of "objectivity" (they don't mean Enlightenment objectivity, they mean the idea that *something* real exists out there, regardless of our interpretations or our problematicizing of our interpretations)--for if we did, we'd lose the "object" of history. But we have to always remember we are essentially subjective (even though our aims in doing history might be).

Appleby, Hunt and Jacob explain they have written this book because it's about time historians explain (to the rest of world) what they do.. As democracy's foundation is the educational enterprise, and as history is integrative of national memory and character, I was struck by this sentiment and theme as a thread through the work.

As an overview of themes for those interested in the historiography of history, this is definitely the book you want to read. For those with some background in historiography, this work is probably not rigorous enough (no sources, only a few pages per major thinker, i.e., if your life is Foucault or Derrida or any of the other people they discuss, you will probably find their discussion on your particular specialty to be lacking, and perhaps question the rest of the work).Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes NoReport abuse | PermalinkComment Comment

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful4.0 out of 5 stars "Telling the truth takes a collective effort.", July 9, 2003By R. DelParto "Rose2" (Virginia Beach, VA USA) - See all my reviews(VINE VOICE)   This review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)When studying, researching, and writing about an historical event, it may take careful reading and an open mind to understand the

foundations that construct a historical narrative. TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT HISTORY is a critical examination of the subject of history by three distinguishable historians, Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, which proves that history and science are essential elements when understanding truth and objectivity as it relates to the past.

TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT HISTORY is by no means a definitive study. However, it introduces the reader to the historical method, and how the discipline as traversed throughout the years with trends and theoretical approaches. The authors of the book are all eminent historians in each of their respective fields, American, European, and Cultural history, but their study is somewhat skewed when they briefly discuss the multicultural aspect to the understanding of history. Indeed, they cannot touch upon all the events that have occurred in world history, and a few of the subjects that they mention in their discussion do not fall in their area of expertise. But it was interesting to read the authors' tug of war discussion pertaining to postmodernist or revisionist history; at the time the book was published, 1994, postmodernism appeared to be an issue, which now and then is subtly discussed.

Overall, the book is very helpful when understanding why one studies, writes, or teaches about history. It is indeed an intricate subject that cannot be clearly understood without understanding other histories and the people and places that constituted a particular past. After re-reading TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT HISTORY, it takes intellectual maturity and experience to understand the premise that the authors were attempting to convey. This is an insightful book recommended for discussion.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes NoReport abuse | PermalinkComment Comment

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful5.0 out of 5 stars A, H, and J offer a pragmatic view of truth, July 25, 2000By Nathaniel Grublet (New Haven, CT United States) - See all my reviewsThis review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)In this historiographical work, the authors convincingly argue that the overthrow of absolutisms which has characterized much of the historical and scientific scholarship of the past century does not carry in its wake the disavowal of all knowledge or truth. In place of the old absolutisms and of the new skepticism, Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob, offer a new model

based on a more pragmatic understanding of objectivity and truth.The authors spend the bulk of this book tracing the development of Enlightenment absolutisms in history and science and cataloguing their demise. While this section is more than adequate, the strength of this book lies in the authors' response to history's current postmodern crisis.The authors are more than willing to acknowledge that the pursuit of knowledge is subjective and affected by the personalities involved, yet they insist that a greater diversity of perspectives also brings historical fact into greater focus.As part of their argument, the authors provide the following illustration: let's assume we are all sitting at a table and an object is placed in the middle of it. We are all historians, and that item is a given part of human history. The postmodernists would say that because my perspective differs from yours, we can never know what the object TRULY looks like. The traditionalists would say that our perspectives must be the same, because the item is the same. A, H, and J would claim that our perspectives differ, but that they differ in such a way that, when combined, they provide a better and truer sense of the object's characteristics.Overall, I find this argument very convincing. Multiculturalism (or, the pursuit of multiple perspectives) is not the enemy of Truth, but rather its friend. In effect, the democratization of the academic world ought to serve as a check against unsupported interpretations and theories, thus honing our understanding of the human past.For a weighty, parallel look at some of these same issues, I strongly recommend HERITAGE AND CHALLENGE by Paul Conkin and Roland Stromberg. For those who are interested in a more theoretical book on the questions facing the field of history today, it is well worth the effort.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes NoReport abuse | PermalinkComment Comment

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful3.0 out of 5 stars Some of the truth, anyway., January 16, 2007By David Marshall (Seattle area) - See all my reviews(REAL NAME)   This review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)Telling the Truth About History is a passionate and insightful tract about the meaning and value of history as it relates in particular to American democracy. The authors, historians at UCLA who have written on American history and on the Enlightenment, argue for a pragmatic and

empirical approach to studying the past, against the "absolutisms" of a reified, capitalized, and "heroic" Science, Cold War ideologies, strong post-modernism, and "traditionalism." Against all that they make the case that history is study of an objective and to some extent knowable past, which should serve democratic values by telling a story that embraces multiple narratives.

Three issues in this book particularly interested me: their take on the epistemology of history, conservatives on campus, and how historians with an ax to grind (basically, almost all of us) can support an idea by placing it in a larger historical context.

I noted with interest that the authors, who generally wrote as secularists, found themselves using the words "faith" and "belief" to describe the historical epistemology they found most reasonable: "Belief in the reality of the past and its knowability is essential to a practice of history . . . An openness to the interplay between certainty and doubt keeps faith with the expansive quality of democracy . . . a belief in the reality of the past . . . Such faith helps discipline the understanding by requiring constant reference to something outside of the human mind."

While I am not sure the adjective "scientific" best describes historical epistemology, such comments remind us that uncertainty and knowledge are always in tension, and that this state of affairs is healthy. History is never a matter of certain proof, rather of warranted belief based on good evidence. I have argued that this form of "faith" is very close to what informed Christians have always meant by the word. This is a common sense view of epistemology that finds middle ground between the positivism of a Richard Dawkins and "blind faith."

The authors position themselves towards the middle of contemporary academic American "culture wars." They admit, on the one hand, that some "politically correct" talk goes too far in limiting free speech. I think their somewhat more emphatic criticism of the opposite tendency, what they call "traditionalism," is mostly overstated, though. They picture conservative colleagues as "muscular ideologues." They accuse those who oppose compulsory classes in women's studies or multiculturalism of carrying out an "all-out war on multiculturalism and the democratization of the university," "using the dead hand of the past . . . to muzzle the voices of the present" and creating a "national bogey in the form of political correctness." They position traditionalists as defenders of the "status quo" and de facto opponents of the "effort to democratize the university."

Much of their talk on this subject seems overwrought, and I don't think it accurately reflects the situation on American universities. The "status

quo" is anything but conservative or "traditionalist" on American campuses. Making the university more "democratic" would entail participation not just by the assortment of neo-Marxists, radical skeptics, relativists, post-modernists, and "liberals" the authors describe, but also by that huge portion of the American populace that holds to "traditional" values. Forcing students to take politically radical classes, which often prove in practice to be taught by professors hostile towards the tradition in which those students have been brought up, seems by their own lights anti-democratic. The authors equate "the decision by an American university to recruit postmodernist faculty members" with "searching for scholars with a particular expertise," as if choosing ideologues of a particular stripe were the same as choosing people with expertise in a given field of study.

I have been told how an earlier generation of moderately liberal faculty members, in a desire to recruit more widely, elected scholars who were wed to some of the far-left agendas they mention. Unfortunately the new, ideological scholars did not always share an appreciation of philosophical diversity, so the faculty became more illiberal and exclusive. It would be naïve to equate radical stances with "liberality" in the ethical sense.

Towards the end of the book, Appleby, Hunt and Jacob make some interesting comments on the democratic value of historical study.

They point out that history can provide minority groups with a psychologically empowering social solidarity. Historical precedent can lend the oppressed a fellowship with the past: "roots," to use the term Alex Haley used to justify his own search for dignity as an African American descendent of slaves.

As someone who studies the process by which Christian thinkers relate their faith to pre-Christian traditions, I find this interesting. But of course historical precedent is a double-edged sword, because every tradition is diverse. Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob open the door to all kinds of "marginal" and "diverse" viewpoints to enter the mainstream, but do not help us judge between them.

The power of alternative historical narratives to strengthen marginal positions is ambivalent. One can find precedent not just for abortion, but infanticide or human sacrifice, in Western history. The Nazis also appealed to a real or imagined pre-Christian past to reinvent slave labor and a virulent form of human sacrifice.

The question, then, is what criterion one will use to decide which parts of the human heritage one should link to. For me, that's Christ. The authors

make it clear that they think neither religion nor science provides an adequate criterion. The pragmatic alternative they offer seems fuzzy and open to manipulation. I guess that's the nature of pragmatism. They seem like reasonable people, though, and make many interesting points.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes NoReport abuse | PermalinkComment Comments (3)

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful3.0 out of 5 stars Not the "Whole" Truth, April 15, 2004By A CustomerThis review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)Telling the Truth presents a very solid overview of western historiography's evolution and provides a provocative argument for the broadening of perspectives of what is valid for historians to include in their search for accurate causes for past events. The authors' intent to model the democratic practice they preach through collective authorship of the essay was evident, and one wonders if it would have been strengthened further by an examination of the impact their own historical context has had on the creation of their individual ideologies. In short, use themselves as case studies. This would be revolutionary of course, but a potentially very interesting historical version of self-analysis: three professional historians, women educated in the United States, during the 1970s, examining how their own environment and training shaped their views.The emphasis on the significance of the printing press and the loss of clerical authority over publication was well stated. Left unexamined was the importance of the rise of the merchant middle class in Southern Europe, which is surprising considering the social history described later in the text. The Civil War's nationalizing effect and the lack of Black America's inclusion in the traditional American narrative are well founded, but leaves the subject's treatment woefully incomplete. The authors would have been able to draw a more accurate picture of rising American nationalism by including the War of 1812 in their analysis for example. And the nation's history of immigration and resulting discrimination, which includes Asians and Latin Americans as well as Europeans and Africans, is far more complex than presented. In short, the opportunity to use the immigrant experience as historical evidence for the authors' views was under utilized. The passing reference to Native American experiences underscored the authors' main point, but is not drawn out. And for American historians promoting a more gendered

approach to history to leave out the suffrage movement was shocking to this reader.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes NoReport abuse | PermalinkComment Comment

13 of 20 people found the following review helpful5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Text for History Graduate Students, August 23, 2001By Tanja M. Laden (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews(REAL NAME)   This review is from: Telling the Truth About History (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)Telling the Truth About History by Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob is both a history book as well as an attempt to outline a new approach to history altogether. At first, Telling the Truth About History reads like a lamentation for the original, scientific historical approach that was born during the enlightenment, but with sound historical data as well as their own theories, it is obvious that the authors are trying to show how all the different movements towards the telling of history originated, and how and why they all ultimately failed. In the beginning of Telling the Truth About History, the authors tell us that history is simply a search for a basic law of human development. The first laws of human development came with Isaac Newton's Principia and defined the "scientist as hero" or "heroic model of science." The book continues to explain how Newtonian science manifested in applied mechanics and became the "mental capital" (23) of the Industrial Revolution. With Newton's laws of mechanics came mechanization of other realms of science and even society. Engines. mines, and even labor could all operate under Newton's mechanization theory. The authors of Telling the Truth About History continue to outline how Newtonian science propagated itself outside of science...meaning that it created more leisure time, and allowed physics and new political laws to be discussed during this leisure time. With "commercial expansion, enlightened reform, and revolution," science was undeniably the backbone of modernity. With modernity and other changes in science, namely Darwin's theory of evolution came new schools of thought, including the Philosophes, positivism, nationalism and Marxism. From this point on, Telling the Truth About History becomes, in a sense, a History of Relativism, and is a story of how American historical scholars gained and lost scientific objectivity, and their struggle to find it again. The American Historical Profession saw great changes in the years after

1880s and professional standards themselves were born. During this time, the authors argue, national -1- identity became one of the most fatal unsuspected blows to scientific history because, especially with the diversity in America, trying to find national identity derailed scholars from telling one agreed upon notion of history. As Peter Novick does in That Noble Dream, the authors chronicle how growing professionalism in history also meant the growing pressure by different special interest/political groups to write a separate, relative history that also pushed scholars away from scientific objectivity. Truth itself began to seem to be an unattainable and idealistic notion with different groups arguing that their truth was right, and "denying the possibility of truth produces a relativism that makes it impossible to choose between Ethical systems." (194) With great care and much evidence, Telling the Truth About History chronicles the search for one truth in history, and it discusses how the latest movements in telling history are right and wrong. Social historians "with their passion for breaking apart the historical record had dug a potentially fatal hole into which history as a discipline might disappear altogether." (200) but postmodernist historians "question the superiority of present and the usefulness of general worldviews." The authors don't say that these two examples are without their respective pros and cons. Social history made room for cultural history, which seeks to explain that human reason is shaped by culture, not social or scientific contexts and infers meaning rather than telling a cause-and-effect history. Likewise, postmodernists attacked the very foundation of history and became ununified and their aim unclear. (206) Both cultural historians and postmodernists attacked the idea of historical narrative, seeing it as unuseful. It is with these very recent developments in history that the authors of Telling the Truth About History make their call to arms in a new approach to telling history. The authors defend the validity of the narrative saying it is a main ingredient in describing individualism and social identity. They make an appeal for Practical Realism, a somewhat romantic search for interpretation of the meaning of events. Through Practical Realism one can recognize both the existence f an event and its interpretations simultaneously(250). In this way, the author argue, the Postmodernists were right to have destroyed meaning that "sustains itself" in objects (257) so that the ditinctions between the objects/events and their meaning can become more clear. Chronicling the rise and fall of scientific history as well as explaining the various movements that grew out of the Enlightenment and and how it was otherwise detrimental to telling history, Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob all argue that the meaning of events already exist, and through a summoning of the original hypothetical and theoretical aspects of the Scientific Model as well as adopting a realism in practice, we can again tell history from a more collective, truthful standpoint.Help other customers find the most helpful reviews Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

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