Overview

Popularizing the Past tells the stories of five postwar historians who changed the way ordinary Americans thought about their nation’s history.   What’s the matter with history? For decades, critics of the discipline have argued that the historical profession is dominated by scholars unable, or perhaps even unwilling, to write for the public. In Popularizing the Past, Nick Witham challenges this interpretation by telling the stories of five historians—Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, John Hope Franklin, Howard Zinn, and Gerda Lerner—who, in the decades after World War II, published widely read books of national history.   Witham compellingly argues that we should understand historians’ efforts to engage with the reading public as a vital part of their postwar identity and mission. He shows how the lives and writings of these five authors were fundamentally shaped by their desire to write histories that captivated both scholars and the elusive general reader. He also reveals how these authors’ efforts could not have succeeded without a publishing industry and a reading public hungry to engage with the cutting-edge ideas then emerging from American universities. As Witham’s book makes clear, before we can properly understand the heated controversies about American history so prominent in today’s political culture, we must first understand the postwar effort to popularize the past.

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9780226826998

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Reviews

I am very taken with Nick Witham's illuminating book and hope that all practicing and aspiring US historians read it. Drawing on careful research and written in sparkling prose that rivals his subjects', Witham examines how five prominent postwar historians navigated the challenges and rewards of scripting national narratives for audiences beyond the academy. For anyone interested in crafting intellectually robust, readable, and relevant scholarship, Popularizing the Past is essential reading. -- Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, author of American Nietzsche A fascinating exploration of American historians searching for their publics and seeking to balance empirical depth and literary flair, scholarship and fame, objectivity and activism. Nick Witham's book is the most probing examination of these matters that I have read. Essential for understanding the importance and perils of writing popular history. -- Gary Gerstle, author of The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order

I am very taken with Nick Witham's illuminating book and hope that all practicing and aspiring US historians read it. Drawing on careful research and written in sparkling prose that rivals his subjects', Witham examines how five prominent postwar historians navigated the challenges and rewards of scripting national narratives for audiences beyond the academy. For anyone interested in crafting 'intellectually credible, engagingly readable, and politically relevant' scholarship, Popularizing the Past is essential reading. -- Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, author of American Nietzsche

Author Information

Nick Witham is associate professor of United States history and head of the department at the Institute of the Americas at University College London. He is the author of The Cultural Left and the Reagan Era: US Protest and Central American Revolution.

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