ABSTRACT
While the ferocity with which historians can battle in journals and at academic conferences may suggest otherwise, most people in the historical profession understand that, for all the masterful work done by professional researchers every year, few people outside of academia really obtain their understanding of the past directly from articles, essays, and scholarly monographs. This is not to say that the work of academic historians is not important. To the contrary, the writing and publishing of good academic history will often have a trickle-down effect into the wider culture. One masterful synthesis-Eric Foner’s splendid 1988 history of Reconstruction after the American Civil War, for example-can eventually transform the way an event is perceived across society. Still, most people’s everyday contact with history comes not from college textbooks and academic lectures but through a host of other resources: museums and libraries, parks and memorials, television documentaries and online Web sites, walking tours, and genealogy archives.
