Practicing History: Selected Essays

Rating:
Summary: Get it for the Two Essays on The Historian
Review: "Practicing History", by Barbara W. Tuchman, sub-titled "Selected Essays". Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1981.

This book is a collection of essays written by the noted Historian, Barbara W. Tuchman (e.g. "The Guns of August"), over the course of her long career. In my humble opinion, for the novice historian, the most interesting essays are, "The Historian as Artist" (pages 45-50), "The Historian's Opportunity", (pages 51-64). In these two essays, Ms. Tuchman challenges the budding historian to not only collect facts, dates and events, but rather to write History so the end product is as engaging as modern novel, BUT, based upon excellent scholarship. Ms. Tuchman is a proponent of "narrative" History, where the facts "...require arrangement, composition planning just like a painting - Rembrandt's 'Night Watch`" (page 49). These two essays would enhance any course in Historiography.

Some of her remaining essays are a bit dated, but provide keen insight into the times, as in Tuchman's "Japan: A Clinical Note", (pages 93-97). Her essays on Israel tend to be a bit chauvinistic, in the sense that the author's objectivity slips and she can find very little wrong with the budding Jewish state in what was once Palestine. The essay, "Perdicaris Alive or Rasuli Dead" (pages 104-117), is very entertaining, particularly if you are interested in New York's Teddy Roosevelt. All in all, the first section of this book, (called "The Craft"), includes essays that should be required reading for a student beginning graduate work in History.

Rating:
Summary: Get it for the Two Essays on The Historian
Review: "Practicing History", by Barbara W. Tuchman, sub-titled "Selected Essays". Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1981.

This book is a collection of essays written by the noted Historian, Barbara W. Tuchman (e.g. "The Guns of August"), over the course of her long career. In my humble opinion, for the novice historian, the most interesting essays are, "The Historian as Artist" (pages 45-50), "The Historian's Opportunity", (pages 51-64). In these two essays, Ms. Tuchman challenges the budding historian to not only collect facts, dates and events, but rather to write History so the end product is as engaging as modern novel, BUT, based upon excellent scholarship. Ms. Tuchman is a proponent of "narrative" History, where the facts "...require arrangement, composition planning just like a painting - Rembrandt's 'Night Watch'" (page 49). These two essays would enhance any course in Historiography.

Some of her remaining essays are a bit dated, but provide keen insight into the times, as in Tuchman's "Japan: A Clinical Note", (pages 93-97). Her essays on Israel tend to be a bit chauvinistic, in the sense that the author's objectivity slips and she can find very little wrong with the budding Jewish state in what was once Palestine. The essay, "Perdicaris Alive or Rasuli Dead" (pages 104-117), is very entertaining, particularly if you are interested in New York's Teddy Roosevelt. All in all, the first section of this book, (called "The Craft"), includes essays that should be required reading for a student beginning graduate work in History.

Rating:
Summary: By now rather dated material...
Review: By now most of these essays are beginning to show their age...I agree with the other reviewer here that her style is quaint. I was most impressed with her ruminations on the craft of creative writing itself, and how that can come into conflict w/ the practice of history, and I enjoyed her reflections on doing historical research and also her considerations on academic vs. non-academic historians, and the importance of readability and narrative vs. cramming loads of facts into one's writing w/o a unifying narrative; British scholar A.L. Rowse makes a similar point (and praises Tuchman) in his _Historians I have known_. After having read Ron David's _The Arabs & Israel_ and a number of works by Noam Chomsky (themselves both American Jewish writers) critiquing modern Israel, I really cannot take Tuchman's triumphmentalist zeal vis a vis Israel seriously; I found myself talking back to the audiobook repeatedly "but Barbara, what about...?" , etc. Tuchman is a mainstream American liberal, and I am Left of the mainstream. I have yet to read Tuchman's seminal work _The Guns of August_, and I am eager to read _The Proud Tower_ also, about the last years of the 19th century before the Great War. You could do worse than Barbara Tuchman, but she is something of an anachronism by now and you can certainly do much better, too. (Howard Zinn comes readily to mind)

Rating:
Summary: Barbara Tuchman for Dinner
Review: I love the feeling that I'm picking the brain of BWT. Her methods of writing and observations are worthwhile for a lifetime. The humility the author has toward fact gathering benefits all her readers. This collection is first a delight to any fan of the woman herself, and second a tool for learning about good history writing. A bonus third point is for history novices like me- a crash course on several topics of interest. A "crash course" from Barbara Tuchman is possibly an experience of the most concise, informative and comprehensive summary on a subject you'll find. A must-have for the restroom bookshelf for those of us addicted to reading.

Rating:
Summary: By now rather dated material...
Review: Selections from this book were used as assigned reading in a historiography course I am taking, and I wasn't impressed. Tuchman's style is silly. Some of these essays are vintage 1940, and sound like it.

Tuchman also has some equally outdated views on World War I, the founding of Israel and its mission in the '60s, and the Anglo-American world order -- her views are blatantly imperialistic. She flatly contradicts her own principles about how history should be written ("historians should never be biased"). Twaddle. Her several essays on Israel in this book describe Israelis as God-like, infallible pioneers incapable of committing injustice yet seemingly always its victims, swinging the rod of civilization against a horde of Palestinians and other war-mongering Arabs, whom she describes in no uncertain terms as a bunch of bickering, babbling, dirty, ignorant wops. The essays on Israel alone clearly show us Barbara Tuchman the disciple of imperial Britain and interventionist America she is. Yet she makes this even more obvious in her totally frivolous essay, "Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli Dead," in which she extols the role of Theodore Roosevelt's blustering American interventionism against the Raisuli, a Moroccan bandit, whom she depicts as the epitome of the Orientalist vision of "mysterious Araby" (ooh...!!!). And a mere glance at her other titles clearly reveal her obvious bias toward the Anglo-American world order, backed up by "progressivist" prejudice and Zionist whining: "Stilwell and the American Experience in China", "Bible and Sword", "The Zimmermann Telegram", "The Guns of August".

As I mentioned above, I think her style of writing is juvenile, tedious, and more appropriate for a historical novel than a factual retelling of past events. In fact, I felt like she wrote some of these essays for middle-schoolers contemplating a career in history.

All in all, this is not a book I would recommend to anyone wanting to learn about historiography. Maybe her other books are better, but this one leaves me wondering how Barbara Tuchman became one of America's greatest historians.

Rating:
Summary: Tuchman on a smaller scale
Review: These essays allow the reader to enjoy Barbara Tuchman's incisive historical analysis and sharp wit in small doses. Most of the essays were written in the 1950s or 1960s or even earlier, but they are still fresh and pointed. Reading Tuchman is like listening to your favorite history professor. She'll tell a dramatic story and finish up with some wry observations that will keep you thinking long after.

Rating:
Summary: Tuchman on a smaller scale
Review: These essays allow the reader to enjoy Barbara Tuchman's incisive historical analysis and sharp wit in small doses. Most of the essays were written in the 1950s or 1960s or even earlier, but they are still fresh and pointed. Reading Tuchman is like listening to your favorite history professor. She'll tell a dramatic story and finish up with some wry observations that will keep you thinking long after.