Volume 22, Number 3 · March 6, 1975
The Great American Butchery
By C. Vann Woodward
The Civil War: A Narrative Vol. 3, Red River to Appomattox
by Shelby Foote
Random House, 1,106 pp., $20.00
Professionals do well to apply the term 'amateur' with caution to the historian outside their ranks. The word does have deprecatory and patronizing connotations that occasionally backfire. This is especially true of narrative history, which nonprofessionals have all but taken over. The gradual withering of the narrative impulse in favor of the analytical urge among professional academic historians has resulted in a virtual abdication of the oldest and most honored role of the historian, that of storyteller. Having abdicated—save in the diminishing proportion of biographies in which analysis does not swamp narrative—the professional is in a poor position to patronize amateurs who fulfill the needed function he has abandoned.
Review, 1740 words
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