Volume 47, Number 2 · February 10, 2000
Looking the Devil in the Face
By Robert Darnton
A Taste for Freedom: The Life of Astolphe de Custine
by Anka Muhlstein, Translated from the French by Teresa Waugh
Helen Marx Books, 391 pp., $16.95 (paper)
Does biography count as history? The question seems impertinent, for no one has the authority to keep a count, ruling some genres in and others out as legitimate forms of scholarship. Serious historians often write excellent biographies, and biographers often win acclaim for their contributions to history. Yet biography occupies an uneasy place in the no man's land between academic scholarship and the general readership; it straddles a fault line in contemporary culture, and it warrants attention by anyone who worries about the role of academic learning in the life of the republic, both the American republic and the republic of letters.
Review, 4376 words
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