On the Teaching and Writing of History: Responses to a Series of Questions
by Bernard Bailyn
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"Accurate historical knowledge is essential for social sanity."Tags
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Reading On the teaching and writing of history was surprising. I expected more of a historiography from a historian as well known as Bernard Bailyn but it could have been the format, questions from Edward C. Lathem answered by Bernard Bailyn, that was disappointing, or the questions, or the editing. Some of the discussions showed flashes of genius, for instance Bailyn once had his new graduate students watch episodes of “Hill Street Blues” and asked if they could not keep track of events on in the show how could they hope to unravel historical events? If you are too young to have seen the show try to find it on youtube or Netflix so you can appreciate the comparison.
There are flashes of brilliance and the book is short so I won’t show more discourage anyone from reading it but there are better historiographies out there. show less
There are flashes of brilliance and the book is short so I won’t show more discourage anyone from reading it but there are better historiographies out there. show less
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50+ Works 7,391 Members
Bernard Bailyn was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1922, and did his undergraduate work at Williams College. He began his teaching career at Harvard University immediately after the university granted him a Ph.D. in 1953, and he remained there until he retired in 1991. During his tenure at Harvard, he was Winthrop Professor, Adams University show more Professor, and James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History. For years Bailyn was editor in chief of the Harvard Library and director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. An innovative and influential historian of early America, Bernard Bailyn has written quantitative studies of the colonial New England economy, probing examinations of the ideological origins of the American Revolution, and penetrating studies of the social and cultural foundations of American education. Bailyn is particularly adept at interweaving social, intellectual, economic, and political factors into coherent narrative history. A pioneer in adapting the new tools of social science to the writing of history, he is also a fine literary stylist. Bailyn has been Pitt Professor at Cambridge University and president of the American Historical Association. He holds membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in the British Academy. His writings have earned him the Bancroft Prize and the National Book Award. Bailyn received two Pulitzers-one in 1968 for The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), which challenges traditional interpretations of the causes of the American Revolution, and the other in 1987 for Voyagers to the West (1986), which explores reasons for migration to America just prior to the Revolution. His other work includes The Barbarous Years (2013) and Illuminating History: A Retrospective of Seven Decades (2020). Bernard Bailyn, author of over 20 books, died on August 7, 2020 at the age of 97. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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