ABSTRACT

Like scholars in other fields, historians have long occupied themselves in self-justification. In a society which calibrates all measures by a single standard, the proof of scientific worth became relevance, which in turn was interpreted as a search not for truth but for political correctness. In a blistering professional critique of this tendency in academic scholarship, perhaps the first of its kind, Oscar Handlin offers an analysis that, if anything, has grown more pertinent over the past decade.

In seventeen chapters, written with the brilliant assurance of a master craftsman, Handlin shows why the turn to partisanship and meaning has undermined the calling of historical research. As his new introduction makes clear, partisanship has taken the best and brightest from the field into different callings. Both widely heralded upon its initial appearance as well as attacked with vigor, Truth in History emanates from a half-century's experience of reading, writing, teaching, researching, and publishing in history and related disciplines. The passage of time has only confirmed the concerns of Handlin and the accuracy of his predictions for the field. This book will be valuable for sociologists, economists, political scientists, and historians. It is a must read for those who contemplate a life of scholarship in liberal arts.

part |40 pages

Personal Reflections on a Calling

chapter |22 pages

1 A Discipline in Crisis

chapter |16 pages

2 Living in a Valley

part |121 pages

The Central Themes of American History

chapter |42 pages

3 A History of American History

chapter |26 pages

4 Theories of Historical Interpretation

chapter |34 pages

5 Historical Criticism

chapter |17 pages

6 An Instance of Criticism

part |128 pages

Dealing with the Evidence

chapter |29 pages

7 How to Read a Word

chapter |33 pages

8 How to Count a Number

chapter |25 pages

9 Seeing and Hearing

chapter |39 pages

10 History in a World of Knowledge

part |78 pages

Persistent Themes and Hard Facts

chapter |23 pages

11 Political Theory and Popular Thought

chapter |16 pages

12 Man and Magic

chapter |21 pages

13 Good Guys and Bad

chapter |16 pages

14 The Two-Party System

part |48 pages

The Uses of History

chapter |12 pages

15 The Diet of a Ravenous Public

chapter |20 pages

16 Ethnicity and the New History

chapter |14 pages

17 The Uses of History