After the fact : the art of historical detection / James West Davidson, Mark Hamilton Lytle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davidson, James West.

Contributor:

Lytle, Mark H.

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States--Historiography.

United States.

Historiography.

United States--History.

History.

Genre:

History.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xxxiv, 398 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Edition:

Third edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : McGraw-Hill, [1992]

Summary:

This text uses 15 dramatic episodes in American history to show students how historians go about the business of interpreting the past. It discusses historical methods within the context of an historical narrative so that students may learn about American history at the same time as seeing how historians use a variety of evidence (diaries, letters, photographs and records) and methods to explain the past. This edition contains a new chapter on the Vietnam experience that examines how Hollywood incorporated the horror of My Lai into their mythic formulations and how dramatic films can be used as historical evidence.

Contents:

The strange death of Silas Deane : the problem of selecting evidence

Serving time in Virginia : the perspectives of evidence in social history

The visible and invisible worlds of Salem : studying crisis at the community level

Declaring independence : the strategies of documentary analysis

Jackson's frontier

and Turner's : history and grand theory

The invisible pioneers : ecological transformations along the western frontier

The madness of John Brown : the uses of psychohistory

The view from the bottom rail : oral history and the freedmen's point of view

The mirror with a memory : photographic evidence and the urban scene

USDA government inspected : the jungle of political history

Sacco and Vanzetti : the case of history versus law

Huey Generis : the Louisiana Kingfish and "great-man" history

The decision to drop the bomb : the uses of models in history

From Rosie to Lucy : the mass media and images of women in the 1950s

Instant Watergate : footnoting The final days

Where trouble comes : history and myth in the films of Vietnam.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 385-386) and index.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has, laid in, a letter from McGraw-Hill to Edward Gorey, care of Gotham Book Mart, requesting he illustrate the cover of the 4th edition of this book.

ISBN:

0070156093

9780070156098

OCLC:

27836240