There’s an interesting post over at Dimitri Rotov’s Civil War Bookshelf. Its main concern is the state of Civil War historiography, but it also raises some interesting questions about the role of narrative in historical writing.
Narrative history is one of those loaded terms. When I was in graduate school, one of my professors (who is a [...]
Archive for the ‘Historiography’ Category
Don’t fear the Dark Side
Posted in Historiography, tagged Allan Eckert, David Hackett Fischer, Edmund S. Morgan, historical writing, Historiography, John Demos, narrative history on September 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The State of Franklin, lost and found
Posted in Historiography, Tennessee History, tagged Lost State of Franklin, Tennessee History on August 23, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Not too long ago I posted about a recently-published book I’d run across, Kevin T. Barksdale’s The Lost State of Franklin: America’s First Secession (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009). I’m always excited to see any new work on the Tennessee frontier, and I eagerly looked forward to reading it.
Franklin was a 1780’s separatist movement in [...]
Another book that needed to be written
Posted in Historiography, Tennessee History, tagged Lost State of Franklin on July 29, 2009 | 2 Comments »
This is turning out to be a good year for books that I’ve always wished somebody would write. Back in March we got the first full-scale study of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, and it was everything I’d hoped it would be.
Today I ran across another new book that I’m frantic to read, Kevin T. [...]
Making sense of Guilford Courthouse
Posted in American Revolution, Historiography, Museums and Historic Sites, tagged Battle of Guilford Courthouse on March 13, 2009 | 4 Comments »
I’ve mentioned before how thrilled I was to learn about a new book called Long, Obstinate, and Bloody: The Battle of Guilford Courthouse, by Lawrence Babits and Joshua Howard. We’ve long needed a full-scale treatment of this battle, and I can’t think of anyone better suited to co-write it than Babits, whose earlier book on the [...]
Facing historical figures
Posted in Historiography, History and Memory on March 8, 2009 | 1 Comment »
I think my favorite living historian is David Hackett Fischer. His books are wide-ranging, exhaustively researched, intelligently argued, and beautifully written. He’s a tremendous inspiration to me, and his work has provided me with many instructive lessons on the craft of history.
One of those lessons involves how to approach historical figures. The temptation, of course, [...]
…and all those seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century wars, too
Posted in Historiography, History and Memory on January 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I drove down to Knoxville, Tennessee today to run a few errands and decided to hit a couple of the bookstores on the west end of town. For those of you who haven’t spent much time there, Knoxville probably has more big bookstores than any other city of comparable size, and some cities much larger—so many, in [...]
Guilford Courthouse study on the way, and it’s about time
Posted in American Revolution, Historiography, tagged Guilford Courthouse on January 12, 2009 | 6 Comments »
One of the most critical battles of the Revolutionary War was the brutal face-off between the armies of Nathanael Greene and Lord Cornwallis at Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina on March 15, 1781. It was a pivotal engagement, a Pyrrhic victory that crippled the British army and contributed to Greene’s reconquest of South Carolina and the surrender of [...]
Following the evidence
Posted in American Revolution, Historiography, tagged Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, republicanism, The Creation of the American Republic, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution on December 18, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Lately I’ve been digging back into a couple of classics on political thought during the American Revolution. The first is Bernard Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, which originated as an introduction to a collection of pamphlets written during the imperial crisis. The second is Gordon Wood’s The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787.
It’s difficult [...]
A handy overview of America’s military beginnings
Posted in American Revolution, Historiography, tagged Continental Army, James Kirby Martin, Mark Edward Lender on November 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I recently picked up a copy of a book that’s worth recommending: A Respectable Army: The Military Origins Of The Republic, 1763-1789, by James Kirby Martin and Mark Edward Lender. This book is part of Harlan Davidson’s American History Series edited by John Hope Franklin and A.S. Eisenstadt, which offers concise guides to important periods and [...]
