Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America - Tapa dura

Witham, Nick

 
9780226826974: Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America
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ISBN 10: 022682697X ISBN 13: 9780226826974
Editorial: University of Chicago Press, 2023

Sinopsis

Popularizing the Past tells the stories of five postwar historians who changed the way ordinary Americans thought about their nation’s history.
 
What’s the matter with history? For decades, critics of the discipline have argued that the historical profession is dominated by scholars unable, or perhaps even unwilling, to write for the public. In Popularizing the Past, Nick Witham challenges this interpretation by telling the stories of five historians―Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, John Hope Franklin, Howard Zinn, and Gerda Lerner―who, in the decades after World War II, published widely read books of national history.
 
Witham compellingly argues that we should understand historians’ efforts to engage with the reading public as a vital part of their postwar identity and mission. He shows how the lives and writings of these five authors were fundamentally shaped by their desire to write histories that captivated both scholars and the elusive general reader. He also reveals how these authors’ efforts could not have succeeded without a publishing industry and a reading public hungry to engage with the cutting-edge ideas then emerging from American universities. As Witham’s book makes clear, before we can properly understand the heated controversies about American history so prominent in today’s political culture, we must first understand the postwar effort to popularize the past.

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Acerca del autor

Nick Witham is associate professor of United States history and head of the department at the Institute of the Americas at University College London. He is the author of The Cultural Left and the Reagan Era: US Protest and Central American Revolution.

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Editorial
University of Chicago Press
Año de publicación
2023
Idioma
Inglés
ISBN 10 
022682697X
ISBN 13 
9780226826974
Encuadernación
Tapa dura
Número de páginas
240
Contacto del fabricante
no disponible
Persona responsable
no disponible

Otras ediciones populares con el mismo título

9780226826998: Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America

Edición Destacada

ISBN 10:  0226826996 ISBN 13:  9780226826998
Editorial: University of Chicago Press, 2023
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