That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession

That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession
ISBN-10
110726829X
ISBN-13
9781107268296
Category
Political Science
Language
English
Published
1988-09-30
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Author
Peter Novick

Description

The aspiration to relate the past 'as it really happened' has been the central goal of American professional historians since the late nineteenth 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 Drawing on the unpublished correspondence as well as the published writings of hundreds of American historians from J. Franklin Jameson and Charles Beard to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and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 Noble 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.

Other editions

Similar books