Recovering the past : a historian's memoir / Forrest McDonald.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McDonald, Forrest.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

McDonald, Forrest.

Historians--United States--Biography.

Historians.

Historiography.

History.

United States.

Historiography--United States--History--20th century.

United States--Historiography.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

vii, 198 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Lawrence, Kan. : University Press of Kansas, [2004]

Summary:

Forrest McDonald is a legend in his own time. Named the sixteenth Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Humanities, he is one of our most eminent historians and the author of numerous provocative works on the early American Republic, the Constitution, and the American presidency. Renowned for his sly wit and iconoclasm, he is also a conservative in a mostly liberal profession, a man who believes that his discipline has been subverted by those who serve public policy agendas. In this book, he candidly recounts and reconsiders his own career, mixing in equal measure autobiography and a sharp critique of the historical craft. Beginning in 1949, McDonald has traversed a sometimes rocky academic road from Brown University to Wayne State and finally the University of Alabama. He rose to prominence by arguing against the popular histories of Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles Beard, and his rebuttal of Beard was published as his seminal book We the People. Recovering the Past carries forward this critical tradition with McDonald's pointed comments on fellow historians from Kenneth Stampp to William Appleton Williams, his admiration for Oscar Handlin's book Truth in History, and his distaste for the revisionism of the New Left historians who depict the American story as an epic of oppression. As McDonald observes, thinking historically facilitates our knowing who and where we are, and the reward of studying the past comes when one realizes how its many parts fit together. As the pieces of his own past fall together, they form a story that will engross, inform, and even gall readers seeking an inside look behind the ivied walls of academe. Recovering the Past offers an eye-opening look at one man and his discipline; more than that, it is a manifesto for those who truly care about history.

Contents:

1 On the Historical Enterprise 1

2 The World as I Entered It 20

3 A New Game and a New Player 47

4 The Adventures of We the People 68

5 A Barefoot Boy in the Ivy League, and a Lot of New Players 90

6 The Sixties, Seventies, and a Bit Beyond 113

7 The Grand (?) Finale 140

Appendix The Intellectual World of the Founding Fathers 167.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0700613293

OCLC:

53887542