Telling the Truth About History

Rating:
Summary: Not the "Whole" Truth
Review: Did history begin with European theorists and scientists? From the perspective of Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, it appears that way. They make immense references to Michel Foucault, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Deridda, and Isaac Newtown without really coming to a conclusion to their contribution to the "truth" about history. These major contributors to history, be it to European or American, belong within the confines of a philosophical and theoretical analysis rather than trying to convince the reader that they make the bulk of historiography or the study of history.

Appleby and cohorts rant back and forth about the Englightenment and the age of old, the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, but never quite come to a consensus of history as a whole. The chapter entitled "Competing Histories of America" merely appeared to be a snore that name dropped and did not represent an objective and revealing analysis as it appeared it should have. The section, "The Implication of Social History for Multiculturalism" should have presented what the title stated, however, it did not. It had been quite disappointing reading this. Not one mention of Native Americans, Asian Americans, oh one name drop of W.E.B. Dubois in reference to African Americans.

Overall analysis, this has been an assessment towards intellectual history. This book should not be taught in a history and theory class, but rather be provided for those who seek an optional supplementary reading list that the professor assigns. Tbis book has too much bias that leans toward the left. Possibly, the authors had a little free time on their hands and they decided to collaborate for the fun of it. Postmodernism appears to be a complex topic that even these three scholars had not been able to explain in laymen terms. Otherwise, TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT HISTORY does not cut it as a title.

I'm so glad that history is alive and well even if one does not read this book. If one wants a good conversation and debate about history, these three scholars' perspective would lend much to the discussion. It would probably raise much opinions on the subject of history, and its place in society no matter what place in the world you live and learn.

Rating:
Summary: Questionable Historiography
Review: Did history begin with European theorists and scientists? From the perspective of Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, it appears that way. They make immense references to Michel Foucault, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Deridda, and Isaac Newtown without really coming to a conclusion to their contribution to the "truth" about history. These major contributors to history, be it to European or American, belong within the confines of a philosophical and theoretical analysis rather than trying to convince the reader that they make the bulk of historiography or the study of history.

Appleby and cohorts rant back and forth about the Englightenment and the age of old, the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, but never quite come to a consensus of history as a whole. The chapter entitled "Competing Histories of America" merely appeared to be a snore that name dropped and did not represent an objective and revealing analysis as it appeared it should have. The section, "The Implication of Social History for Multiculturalism" should have presented what the title stated, however, it did not. It had been quite disappointing reading this. Not one mention of Native Americans, Asian Americans, oh one name drop of W.E.B. Dubois in reference to African Americans.

Overall analysis, this has been an assessment towards intellectual history. This book should not be taught in a history and theory class, but rather be provided for those who seek an optional supplementary reading list that the professor assigns. Tbis book has too much bias that leans toward the left. Possibly, the authors had a little free time on their hands and they decided to collaborate for the fun of it. Postmodernism appears to be a complex topic that even these three scholars had not been able to explain in laymen terms. Otherwise, TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT HISTORY does not cut it as a title.

I'm so glad that history is alive and well even if one does not read this book. If one wants a good conversation and debate about history, these three scholars' perspective would lend much to the discussion. It would probably raise much opinions on the subject of history, and its place in society no matter what place in the world you live and learn.

Rating:
Summary: I hate this book, yet it is good
Review: I am taking my History capstoneatfor my undergrad and I have to say I hate this book. Appleby, Jacob and Hunt all teach history at UCLA. Not known for it's ultra-liberal persepective. SO they bash the church, white males and consevative historians. THey have done their work and the book is well done. I wish that teachers using this book would show the other persepective of historical progress.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A, H, and J offer a pragmatic view of truth
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Strong responses to criticism of history
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Text for History Graduate Students
Review: 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 truth in history, and it discusses how the latest movements in telling history are right and wrong. Social historians "with their passion for breaking apart the historical record had dug a potentially fatal hole into which history as a discipline might disappear altogether." (200) but postmodernist historians "question the superiority of present and the usefulness of general worldviews." The authors don't say that these two examples are without their respective pros and cons. Social history made room for cultural history, which seeks to explain that human reason is shaped by culture, not social or scientific contexts and infers meaning rather than telling a cause-and-effect history. Likewise, postmodernists attacked the very foundation of history and became ununified and their aim unclear. (206) Both cultural historians and postmodernists attacked the idea of historical narrative, seeing it as unuseful. It is with these very recent developments in history that the authors of Telling the Truth About History make their call to arms in a new approach to telling history. The authors defend the validity of the narrative saying it is a main ingredient in describing individualism and social identity. They make an appeal for Practical Realism, a somewhat romantic search for interpretation of the meaning of events. Through Practical Realism one can recognize both the existence f an event and its interpretations simultaneously(250). In this way, the author argue, the Postmodernists were right to have destroyed meaning that "sustains itself" in objects (257) so that the ditinctions between the objects/events and their meaning can become more clear. Chronicling the rise and fall of scientific history as well as explaining the various movements that grew out of the Enlightenment and and how it was otherwise detrimental to telling history, Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob all argue that the meaning of events already exist, and through a summoning of the original hypothetical and theoretical aspects of the Scientific Model as well as adopting a realism in practice, we can again tell history from a more collective, truthful standpoint.

Rating:
Summary: Not the "Whole" Truth
Review: Telling the Truth presents a very solid overview of western historiography's evolution and provides a provocative argument for the broadening of perspectives of what is valid for historians to include in their search for accurate causes for past events. The authors' intent to model the democratic practice they preach through collective authorship of the essay was evident, and one wonders if it would have been strengthened further by an examination of the impact their own historical context has had on the creation of their individual ideologies. In short, use themselves as case studies. This would be revolutionary of course, but a potentially very interesting historical version of self-analysis: three professional historians, women educated in the United States, during the 1970s, examining how their own environment and training shaped their views.

The emphasis on the significance of the printing press and the loss of clerical authority over publication was well stated. Left unexamined was the importance of the rise of the merchant middle class in Southern Europe, which is surprising considering the social history described later in the text. The Civil War's nationalizing effect and the lack of Black America's inclusion in the traditional American narrative are well founded, but leaves the subject's treatment woefully incomplete. The authors would have been able to draw a more accurate picture of rising American nationalism by including the War of 1812 in their analysis for example. And the nation's history of immigration and resulting discrimination, which includes Asians and Latin Americans as well as Europeans and Africans, is far more complex than presented. In short, the opportunity to use the immigrant experience as historical evidence for the authors' views was under utilized. The passing reference to Native American experiences underscored the authors' main point, but is not drawn out. And for American historians promoting a more gendered approach to history to leave out the suffrage movement was shocking to this reader.

Rating:
Summary: Historical joy ride
Review: Well written with ample empirical examples and insights most of us would never consider. This book is for anyone interested in tracing Western perspectives from the emergence of reason under the thumb of ignorance and dogma, through the advent of science, to muddlings of our present era returning to ignorance and dogma under the confines of censorship and totalitarian Political Correctness.

Driving forces that made America and the West what it became are surveyed - forces including the birth of reason, influence of science and our Western notion of progress. Focused on their topic, our authors properly consider what matters most to America and the West, excluding a vast array of other cultures because those cultures (Mayan, Hutu, Chilean, Eskimo - a virtually endless list) have little or absolutely nothing to do with Western development. Thus we are saved from useless inclusion of irrelevance. Nor do they waste trees on a cacophony of "voices" with something opposing to say about the facts of history as though their intent is to produce committee minutes. Noted, repeatedly, are oversights and outright suppression of females as bared from the men's club, but it is treated as a fact of history, not a call to arms.

Results of these forces included exaltation of history and "heroic science" as a means of positive reference for America (and Europe) that has since been attacked by factions wishing in part to make history's picture larger while reinventing history in ways that deny credit for anyone but their own group. It requires imagination, but the authors clarify how successful Postmodernist relatives have been in advancing the most ridiculous ideas, and, as noted, would not be given a second thought were they not becoming so dominant at our universities. Ideas such as; We invent theories in science, we do not discover them; What was not said or not written is more important than what was - as everyone in every period is said to have been political and fully so with no regard for truth. Thus whatever point was made was in fact a diversion hiding what they "really" meant. This brings to bear creative talents of our finest historians and "text interpreters" as they expend lifetimes inventing, out of thin air, what the truth "really" was. A boundless exercise as what was not spoken or written remains infinite, while what was is limited. And such conclusions from those who paradoxically preach "the truth is, there is no truth, and that's the truth".

Thankfully the authors state the obvious. "Relativism, a modern corollary of skepticism" not only reasonably questions but is now used to promote doubt in knowledge of any kind, while to the contrary our authors argue "truths about the past are possible, even if they are not absolute". For those who claim we can know nothing, and that even our theories of nature are pure, politicized imagination, we are reminded that artifacts exist - remains of civilizations, buildings, monuments, graveyards on battlegrounds, movements resulting from written words and speeches. As for inventing scientific theories as simply another false Western bias, one may wonder how all those atoms and galaxies know our political views well enough to behave precisely as predicted by theory.

The authors commit the error of confusing science with scientists - science being an ideal, while scientists remain human - and they wrongly promote a reference which claims the defense industry as dominated by scientists when it is rather dominated by engineers. This offering to reinforce a notion that science is political. (Indeed, scientists may be.) With an open mindedness bordering on mere "inclusivity" Postmodernists are given limited credit, stating they "deserve" to be heard on some matters - which left me wondering why serious historians would squander time on sophomoric reflections of declining education and trite exercises in sensitivity toward the absurd. We might consider the notion of a moon made of green cheese still holds promise if a certain vast system of conditions concerning our measurements and conceptions exist - say that we are in fact being manipulated by aliens. But any advancement in our understanding of the human condition is bound to be wasted. As a German engineer once said, "I have no time to waste on probable failures." So why waste it?

An assumption is made from the outset - common to anyone's era, which is not challenged - that the past was incorrect in their perspective. Perhaps we are wrong in refuting their positivism. Instead we assume without question the heroic models were flawed. Despite what we consider the past's delusions and narrow mindedness, we are never offered an option that their perspective, though incomplete, was superior to our own in which winners at the auction are those with the most terrible things to say about who we are. Perhaps the authors saw this as too "inclusive" and a probable failure.

Rating:
Summary: One of the Worst Books on Historiography
Review: What is most surprising about "Telling the Truth about History" is that Appleby et al, attempt to include the postmodern, multicultural, and feminist perspectives as valid paradigms for historical inquiry. Appleby et al fail miserably in integrating these perspectives into the text. The majority of the text is, yet again, another grand historical narrative in which the intellectual ideas of white, presumably heterosexual, men are given priority and the most detailed attention. Apparently the intellectual ideas and lives of women, feminists, people of color, the poor, and those other than the elite intellectual class have fallen upon deaf ears. Appleby et al chide those who have in the past excluded the "others" but yet fail to include these others within their historical narrative. Appleby et al's treatment of racial minorities, sexual minorities, and those without hegemonic control of intellectual power structures is tokenistic at its best. Feminism is given a paragraph and queer theory is left out entirely. Any discussion of racial minorities and their "perspective" is lumped under the heading of multiculturalism and no where are "multicultural" authors given any specific mention by name. We are yet again asked to assume that the "others" are nameless, faceless, and unimportant. Yet again, we are asked to believe that history is the history of white heterosexual capitalist Eurocentric white men. Appleby et al maintain that, "What you don't know is especially hurtful, for it denies you the opportunity to deal with reality. It restricts choices by restricting information". (307). If this is so, when why is so much left out! Why is there no mention of the 19th century African-American women and their perspective on history? Why is there no mention of South American historians, Asian historians, Native American historians, the way the Maya and Incas and Nuer of Africa viewed history? Why is so much left out? Where are the Audre Lorde's, the Frantz Fanon's, the bell hooks', the Anna Julia Cooper's, the Claudia Card's, the Judith Butler's, the Barbara Smith's, the Cornel West's, the W.E.B. Du Bois', the Trin T Minh-ha's, the Gayatri Charkravorty Spivak's, the Patricia Hill Collins', the Gloria Anzaldua's, and the Wei Jingsheng's? They do exist; they do have a voice. I am sure that they are excluded because "History" as presented by this book is supposedly European enterprise, that no one else had anything significant to say about the past other than those who have been venerated as purveyors of the "historical truth". Martin Duberman, a historian at Lehman College states, "You cannot link arms under a univeralist banner when you can't find your own name on it. A minority identity may be contingent or incomplete, but that does not make it fabricated or needless. And cultural unity cannot be purchased at the cost of cultural erasure". It seems that Appleby et al wish for us to live under a univeralist banner of historical inquiry, in which, the belief in the historical narrative of the past is the best way to interpret and understand history, that political history, or the history of the powerful, and therefore of the important, is history. I think not.