Telling the truth about history / Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob.
1994
E175 .A67 1994 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection
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Details
Title
Telling the truth about history / Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob.
Author
Appleby, Joyce, 1929-2016.
ISBN
9780393312867 (paperback)
0393312860 (paperback)
9780393036152
0393036154
0393312860 (paperback)
9780393036152
0393036154
Imprint
New York : Norton, ©1994.
Language
English
Description
322 pages ; 21 cm
Call Number
E175 .A67 1994
Dewey Decimal Classification
973/.072
Summary
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.
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.
Note
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.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Added Author
Hunt, Lynn, 1945-
Jacob, Margaret C., 1943-
Jacob, Margaret C., 1943-
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Table of Contents
The heroic model of science
Scientific history and the idea of modernity
History makes a nation
Competing histories of America
Discovering the clay feet of science
Postmodernism and the crisis of modernity
Truth and objectivity
The future of history.
Scientific history and the idea of modernity
History makes a nation
Competing histories of America
Discovering the clay feet of science
Postmodernism and the crisis of modernity
Truth and objectivity
The future of history.