More Than a Historian: The Political and Economic Thought of Charles A. Beard

Rating:
Summary: The Most Important American Historian of the 20th Century
Review: When I was in graduate school Charles Beard was one of the figures that everyone loved to trash, but no one had ever read. Professors and their nodding students constantly pointed at Beard as an example of "determinism" or "reductionism" - someone who used a method of analysis that they politically did not agree with. Unfortunately, the current trend in academic history is to scorn any theoretical analysis at all and instead embrace the fad of "post-modernism." In historical writing this means trying to get the subjects to speak for themselves and not to interject your voice or to pass any judgement or impose a grand theory over events - there is no absolute truth so how can you claim to have a true opinion they argue.

Charles Beard helped to found the American Historical Review and wrote The Economic Interpreation to the Constitution - which has put all books since in its shadow. The books that followed this first classic became widely read best sellers. Beard wrote a grand narrative history of the United States from its founding to the 1930's - something very few historians of today would even attempt.

Beard's work has been misunderstood and mischaracterized by people since the 1950's. Barrow's excellent book does a good job of identifying the real sources of Beard's framework and brings Beard's real thoughts back to life. I know of no other book that does this as well as Barrow's.

Scholars of today will profit from this book, because it will help them rediscover a method of analysis that is a useful tool to understanding not only the past, but today.

Beard's primary source of inspiration for his "economic interpretation" was James Madison's Federalist X. The economic intepretation is simple and logical, and can be summed up as follows:

Economic relations - > class structure -> social actors -> events -> economic relations

Economic relations - form the class structure of society - the social actors grow up inside of this structure - their actions and thoughts create the politics and state of society and also its culture and ideology - which in turn effect and can alter the economic relations

Hardly a reductionist theory - but one that takes on an organic life of its own. I believe this is an excellent theoretical view of social life and goes further than "post-modern" type theories which only focus on culture and ideology and are truly reductionist models, because they go no further than where they start.

If you are interested in serious history - history that goes beyond simply recounting events and biographies - you need a intellectual and theoretical underpinning that can be used as an interprative framework to understand what is behind the events that happen. This book will help you understand the thoughts of one man who did just that and was the most famous American historian of the first half of the 20th century. Hard to imagine a historian being truly famous, but he was. He was bigger than Stephen Ambrose during his time and was probably the most influential historian in American history. Only people close were Frederick Jackson Turner, Alfred Mayhan, or Henry Adams - and they were from the century before him.

This is a good book. Clear and concise.

Rating:
Summary: The Most Important American Historian of the 20th Century
Review: When I was in graduate school Charles Beard was one of the figures that everyone loved to trash, but no one had ever read. Professors and their nodding students constantly pointed at Beard as an example of "determinism" or "reductionism" - someone who used a method of analysis that they politically did not agree with. Unfortunately, the current trend in academic history is to scorn any theoretical analysis at all and instead embrace the fad of "post-modernism." In historical writing this means trying to get the subjects to speak for themselves and not to interject your voice or to pass any judgement or impose a grand theory over events - there is no absolute truth so how can you claim to have a true opinion they argue.

Charles Beard helped to found the American Historical Review and wrote The Economic Interpreation to the Constitution - which has put all books since in its shadow. The books that followed this first classic became widely read best sellers. Beard wrote a grand narrative history of the United States from its founding to the 1930's - something very few historians of today would even attempt.

Beard's work has been misunderstood and mischaracterized by people since the 1950's. Barrow's excellent book does a good job of identifying the real sources of Beard's framework and brings Beard's real thoughts back to life. I know of no other book that does this as well as Barrow's.

Scholars of today will profit from this book, because it will help them rediscover a method of analysis that is a useful tool to understanding not only the past, but today.

Beard's primary source of inspiration for his "economic interpretation" was James Madison's Federalist X. The economic intepretation is simple and logical, and can be summed up as follows:

Economic relations - > class structure -> social actors -> events -> economic relations

Economic relations - form the class structure of society - the social actors grow up inside of this structure - their actions and thoughts create the politics and state of society and also its culture and ideology - which in turn effect and can alter the economic relations

Hardly a reductionist theory - but one that takes on an organic life of its own. I believe this is an excellent theoretical view of social life and goes further than "post-modern" type theories which only focus on culture and ideology and are truly reductionist models, because they go no further than where they start.

If you are interested in serious history - history that goes beyond simply recounting events and biographies - you need a intellectual and theoretical underpinning that can be used as an interprative framework to understand what is behind the events that happen. This book will help you understand the thoughts of one man who did just that and was the most famous American historian of the first half of the 20th century. Hard to imagine a historian being truly famous, but he was. He was bigger than Stephen Ambrose during his time and was probably the most influential historian in American history. Only people close were Frederick Jackson Turner, Alfred Mayhan, or Henry Adams - and they were from the century before him.

This is a good book. Clear and concise.