Klik op een omslag om naar Google Boeken te gaan.
Bezig met laden... Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar Americadoor Nick Witham
Geen Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
"Nick Witham investigates how widely popular history books have gotten written, promoted, and institutionalized. Not just a matter of writing style, popular accessibility is also a product of an author's frame of mind, the editor's skill, and the publisher's marketing acumen, among other factors. Witham has done extensive work not just in historians' archives but in publishers' files. His primary subjects are Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, John Hope Franklin, Gerda Lerner, and Howard Zinn-all popular historians who were explicitly concerned with the question of popularity. Collectively, they reveal the cross-influences of popular history writing and American popular culture"-- Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
Actuele discussiesGeen
Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)973.07202History and Geography North America United States United States Education And Research ResearchLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: Geen beoordelingen.Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. |
Witham offers five chapters, one each for the lives and works of postwar American historians Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, John Hope Franklin, Howard Zinn and Gerda Lerner. Biographical details of the authors, some textual analysis of their keystone works, and publication histories are interwoven with a dose of reception history. The prose is sturdy and readable, and the biographies of these authors are fascinating. (Boorstin’s father defended Jewish factory owner Leo Frank when he was accused of killing teenage worker Mary Phagan – just one such revealing detail showing the way the historians’ lives intertwined with their times.)
The argument of Witham’s book is that the audience for popular historical nonfiction that explains America to itself has always been a diverse one, made up of various types of readers. The imagined past, when an idealised American reader relaxed by the fireside with a sturdy tome written by a credentialed academic, is, largely speaking, a fiction. Hofstadter’s The American Political Tradition (1948), for example, was aimed at a ‘general’ audience that, Witham writes, was considered to be made up of ‘educated and intelligent American citizens from across the political spectrum who appreciated the opportunity to learn from experts’. These ‘middlebrow’ (to use the terminology of the times) readers were more likely to encounter nonfiction than before because of the paperback revolution.
Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.
Rebecca Onion is a senior editor at Slate.