Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin

by Peter Charles Hoffer

Book Overview

Woodrow Wilson, a practicing academic historian before he took to politics, defined the importance of history: "A nation which does not know what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today." He, like many men of his generation, wanted to impose a version of America's founding identity: it was a land of the free and a home of the brave. But not the braves. Or the slaves. Or the disenfranchised women. So the history of Wilson's generation omitted...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1586484451
• ISBN13: 9781586484453
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

The shifting sands of historical fads and fashions

Past Imperfect is a remarkable book. It contains both an extensive commentary on recent instances of fabrication, plagiarism, and falsification by professional historians and a useful survey of the history of attempts by American historians to write about the past. Peter Hoffer, a distinguished University of Georgia historian with considerable experience in dealing with ethical issues among historians, sets out some of the reasons that it is not possible for historians to be neutral and objective and also why they are tempted to cheat. To set the stage for his examination of several recent instances of blatant misbehavior by several well-known historians, Hoffer describes the rise of professional standards that historians are presumed to follow, including the American Historical Association's guidelines for professional conduct, as well as the efforts to enforce these standards. Hoffer describes some of the temptations to fabricate that historians face in their search for tenure, fame, and wealth. His examination of the misdeeds of some famous contemporary historians--Stephen Ambrose, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michael Bellesiles, and Joseph Ellis--is judicious and fair, if not exhaustive. Ambrose was widely known for being what Hoffer describes as a "superb storyteller"(p. 176), evident in his acclaimed 1992 book Band of Brothers, a tale of a company of paratroopers in the 181st Airborn Division from D-day until the end of World War II. Ambrose found his career in shambles at the end of his life because of claims "that he improperly borrowed from others' works, putting his name on what was not his--what Ambrose said added up to "about 10 pages out of a total work of some 15,000 pages in print" (p. 177). Hoffer is generous in his assessment of the scholarly sins of Ambrose. The case of Joseph Ellis should be of special interest to Latter-day Saints. Walter V. Robinson, an investigative reporter at the Boston Globe, discovered that Ellis had fabricated an entire career as an antiwar protestor and active participant in the Vietnam War in his wildly popular lectures to undergraduate students at Amherst College and Mount Holyoke. Ellis, a gifted writer, had achieved notoriety for books such as the Founding Brothers (2000), in which he sought to turn the large figures in the founding of America into human beings. He was controversial because at first he "denied Thomas Jefferson's relations with his slave Sally Hemings, then reversed himself on the issue" (p. 213). What Hoffer does not reveal is that it was also Ellis who, in an attempt to persuade voters that President Bill Clinton was just doing what others of large reputation had done previously, proclaimed there was DNA proof that Thomas Jefferson had fathered one of Hemings's children. This was not exactly what the DNA studies had shown, since the father could have been the brother of Thomas Jefferson or one of his brother's sons. Ellis clearly used his large reputation to distort the relevant DNA fi

139 pages are wasted

This should have been 2 books: pages 1-139 and the rest. The descriptions of the misdeeds of the four malefactors, Bellesiles, Ambrose, Goodwin, and Ellis, don't come in detail until chapter 5. You can safely skip to chapter five and begin there. The author knows his facts and writes well, and presumably has not committed any of the deeds he describes, but this book still drags and I was glad to be done with it.

Insightful & Enjoyable history of historical writing

In an effort to provide a history of historical writing, Peter Hoffer has taken an unusual approach - looking at scandals that have plagued historical scholarship in the very recent past, but comparing that against the earliest histories of our nation. Hoffer gives the reader a good, strong understanding of the different schools of historiography (i.e. consensus history, neo-consensus, and "new" history). He then explains how the "new" history led to a rise in popular history and the conversion of four academics into the realm of popular history, which nearly destroyed all of them. The cases of Stephen Ambrose, Michael Bellesiles, Joseph Ellis, and Doris Kearns-Goodwin all share one thing in common - they are associated with a lack of careful historical scholarship and, in some cases, outright fraud. Hoffer provides the reader with an insightful look at the sins committed by these four historians and explains why the transgressions were so significant, even if the errors made by the historian were in the classroom and not in the written text. This is a valuable book, and one that all students of history should read. It is enjoyable and teaches us valuable lessons about how a failure to be careful can spell disaster or doom for a historians' career.

Can Historians Police Themselves?

Initially I thought this book, by the distinguished University of Georgia historian Peter Charles Hoffer, would be limited to examining cases of historian inappropriate conduct, including plagiarism, falsification of data, and outright fabrication. That he does, but the book is so much more. In order to establish the context for his discussion of recent misdeeds by some prominent historians, Hoffer essentially writes a substantial history of the how the concept of history has developed in this country--i.e., a history of historic writing. Of course, the issue has always been relative to historical writing whether there are absolute truths, or whether interpretation and bias make it impossible to write value-free analytical history. Hoffer discusses several traditions which sets the stage for his later discussion: Consensus history (things are great); the new history (much more critical, especially as to the role of slavery, women and immigration); professions of history (which developed as the discipline became more professionalized (H.B. Adams and Johns Hopkins); Progressive history ala Charles Beard; and Cold War History (Daniel Boorstin's "The Americans" Trilogy). Along the way, the author also discusses the "National History Standards" and the American Historical Association's guidelines for professional conduct and its former "Professional Division" which enforced them. Hoffer then moves on(in the second half of the book)to looking at some prominent recent cases where inappropriate conduct was alleged: Bellesiles' book on the extent of colonial gun ownership (alleged falsification); Doris Goodwin and Steven Ambrose (alleged plagiarism); and Joseph Ellis (alleged fabrication of his Vietnam background). For the most part, Hoffer's analysis of these cases is judicious and balanced--he is, however, unduly harsh re Ellis, apparently assuming that if Ellis fabricated his Vietnam involvement, he then became a much less careful historian and exaggerated findings suggested in his research. In passing, Hoffer touches on the key problem--how historians must adjust to the lure of fame and riches in order to reach the popular history market. A whole book could easily be written on this issue alone. A very substantial introduction to a vitally important topic by an outstanding historian who has participated in several AHA ethical reviews.

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