Volume 29, Number 13 · August 12, 1982
Star-Spangled History
By Gordon S. Wood
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 Woodward, general editor.)
(Volume II of the Oxford History of the United States, C. Vann, by Robert Middlekauff
Oxford University Press, 696 pp., $25.00
The call (or is it a cry?) is coming from many directions: the discipline of history is in trouble and the remedy lies in some sort of return to narrative history. Henry Steele Commager, Page Smith, Eric Foner, Lawrence Stone, and most recently Bernard Bailyn in his 1981 presidential address to the American Historical Association have all in different ways suggested that historians today are or ought to be doing more of what they have traditionally done—telling stories. This revival of narrative will not be easy. Indeed, writing narrative history under conditions that make it difficult if not well-nigh impossible, says Bailyn, is 'the great challenge of modern historical scholarship.'
Review, 4964 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |