Telling the Truth about History

by Margaret C. Jacob, Lynn Hunt, Joyce Appleby

Book Overview

"A fascinating historiographical essay. . . . An unusually lucid and inclusive explication of what it ultimately at stake in the culture wars over the nature, goals, and efficacy of history as a discipline."--Booklist

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393312860
• ISBN13: 9780393312867
• Release Date: April 1995
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

"Telling the truth takes a collective effort."

When studying, researching, and writing about an historical event, it may take careful reading and an open mind to understand the foundations that construct a historical narrative. TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT HISTORY is a critical examination of the subject of history by three distinguishable historians, Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, which proves that history and science are essential elements when understanding truth and objectivity as it relates to the past. TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT HISTORY is by no means a definitive study. However, it introduces the reader to the historical method, and how the discipline as traversed throughout the years with trends and theoretical approaches. The authors of the book are all eminent historians in each of their respective fields, American, European, and Cultural history, but their study is somewhat skewed when they briefly discuss the multicultural aspect to the understanding of history. Indeed, they cannot touch upon all the events that have occurred in world history, and a few of the subjects that they mention in their discussion do not fall in their area of expertise. But it was interesting to read the authors' tug of war discussion pertaining to postmodernist or revisionist history; at the time the book was published, 1994, postmodernism appeared to be an issue, which now and then is subtly discussed. Overall, the book is very helpful when understanding why one studies, writes, or teaches about history. It is indeed an intricate subject that cannot be clearly understood without understanding other histories and the people and places that constituted a particular past. After re-reading TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT HISTORY, it takes intellectual maturity and experience to understand the premise that the authors were attempting to convey. This is an insightful book recommended for discussion.

Excellent Text for History Graduate Students

Telling the Truth About History by Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob is both a history book as well as an attempt to outline a new approach to history altogether. At first, Telling the Truth About History reads like a lamentation for the original, scientific historical approach that was born during the enlightenment, but with sound historical data as well as their own theories, it is obvious that the authors are trying to show how all the different movements towards the telling of history originated, and how and why they all ultimately failed. In the beginning of Telling the Truth About History, the authors tell us that history is simply a search for a basic law of human development. The first laws of human development came with Isaac Newton's Principia and defined the "scientist as hero" or "heroic model of science." The book continues to explain how Newtonian science manifested in applied mechanics and became the "mental capital" (23) of the Industrial Revolution. With Newton's laws of mechanics came mechanization of other realms of science and even society. Engines. mines, and even labor could all operate under Newton's mechanization theory. The authors of Telling the Truth About History continue to outline how Newtonian science propagated itself outside of science...meaning that it created more leisure time, and allowed physics and new political laws to be discussed during this leisure time. With "commercial expansion, enlightened reform, and revolution," science was undeniably the backbone of modernity. With modernity and other changes in science, namely Darwin's theory of evolution came new schools of thought, including the Philosophes, positivism, nationalism and Marxism. From this point on, Telling the Truth About History becomes, in a sense, a History of Relativism, and is a story of how American historical scholars gained and lost scientific objectivity, and their struggle to find it again. The American Historical Profession saw great changes in the years after 1880s and professional standards themselves were born. During this time, the authors argue, national -1- identity became one of the most fatal unsuspected blows to scientific history because, especially with the diversity in America, trying to find national identity derailed scholars from telling one agreed upon notion of history. As Peter Novick does in That Noble Dream, the authors chronicle how growing professionalism in history also meant the growing pressure by different special interest/political groups to write a separate, relative history that also pushed scholars away from scientific objectivity. Truth itself began to seem to be an unattainable and idealistic notion with different groups arguing that their truth was right, and "denying the possibility of truth produces a relativism that makes it impossible to choose between Ethical systems." (194) With great care and much evidence, Telling the Truth About History chronicles the search for one tru

Strong responses to criticism of history

Since this book was written in the wake of the intellectual `wars' at U.S. universities involving multiculturalism, political correctness and the subsequent backlash to these, it primarily focuses on the history profession in the United States rather than worldwide. Thus, some of the book's shortcomings in not dealing adequately with non-American or non-Western European views or concerns can be forgiven. Despite these flaws, "Telling the Truth About History" very successfully addresses the many criticisms hurled at the scholarly pursuit of history in recent decades, and the three authors' conclusions can be useful and edifying even for those historians living and working far beyond America's borders. In line with the pragmatism and practical realism the authors extol in their last several chapters, they essentially call for a middle ground between the extremes of postmodern relativism and the apparent absolutes of the Enlightenment `heroic science' model. This means not abandoning the pursuit of verity while incorporating many of criticisms and even methods of the postmodernist theorists. Truth may still be elusive as ever (to say nothing of absolute truth) but, as they say at one point, even provisional truths are better than ignorance or outright falsehoods - with a nice example from the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev years to illustrate this point. This is a very well-written and persuasive argument for history as a rigorous and expansive (and mind-expanding) academic discipline. Along the way, the authors also provide a very informative overview of historiography from the Enlightenment era to the present, albeit in a largely American context.

A, H, and J offer a pragmatic view of truth

In this historiographical work, the authors convincingly argue that the overthrow of absolutisms which has characterized much of the historical and scientific scholarship of the past century does not carry in its wake the disavowal of all knowledge or truth. In place of the old absolutisms and of the new skepticism, Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob, offer a new model based on a more pragmatic understanding of objectivity and truth.The authors spend the bulk of this book tracing the development of Enlightenment absolutisms in history and science and cataloguing their demise. While this section is more than adequate, the strength of this book lies in the authors' response to history's current postmodern crisis. The authors are more than willing to acknowledge that the pursuit of knowledge is subjective and affected by the personalities involved, yet they insist that a greater diversity of perspectives also brings historical fact into greater focus. As part of their argument, the authors provide the following illustration: let's assume we are all sitting at a table and an object is placed in the middle of it. We are all historians, and that item is a given part of human history. The postmodernists would say that because my perspective differs from yours, we can never know what the object TRULY looks like. The traditionalists would say that our perspectives must be the same, because the item is the same. A, H, and J would claim that our perspectives differ, but that they differ in such a way that, when combined, they provide a better and truer sense of the object's characteristics.Overall, I find this argument very convincing. Multiculturalism (or, the pursuit of multiple perspectives) is not the enemy of Truth, but rather its friend. In effect, the democratization of the academic world ought to serve as a check against unsupported interpretations and theories, thus honing our understanding of the human past.For a weighty, parallel look at some of these same issues, I strongly recommend HERITAGE AND CHALLENGE by Paul Conkin and Roland Stromberg. For those who are interested in a more theoretical book on the questions facing the field of history today, it is well worth the effort.

Excellent!

I found this book to be one of the most valuable and most hopeful books I have read in a long time. As a High School teacher of American history, I have long grappled with the question of historical truth and how best to teach it to students. I have also wondered if I could justify my own profession, since American history instruction so often seems to be simply political indoctrination in one form or another. This book gave me hope that my efforts are not in vain. The book traces the evolution of history from the enlightenment model of scientific history through postwar issues of postmodernism and relativism;. and the authors persuasively argue that historical truth is possible, even if not absolute. The book is not light reading - I was not able to race through the book, but had to wade through it, so to speak. However, I do feel the book is well worth reading. It is well written, balanced and fair-minded, and it transcends the simplistic conservative-liberal debate over the teaching of history. I feel the book should be read by everyone who is concerned with the teaching of history or the question of historical truth.