More than a Historian

More than a Historian PDF Author: Clyde Barrow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351326708
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Charles A. Beard (1874-1948) was one of America's most influential historians and political scientists. He played a major role in founding the disciplines of history and political science, helped shape the teaching of social studies in the nation's public schools, and was one the nation's most popular public intellectuals. Yet in the second half of the twentieth century, Beard's reputation has been eroded by relentless criticism. Clyde W. Barrow argues that Beard's work has renewed relevance in light of recent theoretical debates about the new institutionalism, the crisis of the welfare state, and American foreign policy messianism. Barrow's takes Beard seriously as a political theorist, while challenging many misconceptions. For example, Beard's method of economic interpretation has been dismissed as Marxist, but Barrow carefully reconstructs the sources of Beard's thinking to demonstrate that his method owes more to historical and institutional economics and that his concept of state-society relations was in fact derived from Madison's Tenth Federalist. Barrow reconstructs Beard's theory of American political development using his concept of realistic dialectics, which viewed the clash between democracy (Jeffersonianism) and capitalism (Hamiltonianism) as the engine of American political development. During the 1930s, Beard suggested that the United States was making the transition to a higher form of social and industrial democracy that would supersede the contradiction of American political development. Notably, Beard was a critic of the New Deal and the liberal welfare state, because they failed to reconstruct the economic relations that reproduce inequalities of income, status, and power.Beard went on to voice his concern that at crucial junctures in American history, class struggle is diverted into international conflicts as popular leaders back down from a direct confrontation with the dominant capitalist elite. He analyzes American foreign policy as an extension of domestic economic policy and, in particular, a result of the failures of domestic economic policy. Beard's conception of American history plays itself out in a tragic cycle of imperialism and diversion that left him a disenchanted realist. This incisive study will be of interest to those intrested in the evolution of historical thinking.

More than a Historian

More than a Historian PDF Author: Clyde Barrow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351326708
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Get Book Here

Book Description
Charles A. Beard (1874-1948) was one of America's most influential historians and political scientists. He played a major role in founding the disciplines of history and political science, helped shape the teaching of social studies in the nation's public schools, and was one the nation's most popular public intellectuals. Yet in the second half of the twentieth century, Beard's reputation has been eroded by relentless criticism. Clyde W. Barrow argues that Beard's work has renewed relevance in light of recent theoretical debates about the new institutionalism, the crisis of the welfare state, and American foreign policy messianism. Barrow's takes Beard seriously as a political theorist, while challenging many misconceptions. For example, Beard's method of economic interpretation has been dismissed as Marxist, but Barrow carefully reconstructs the sources of Beard's thinking to demonstrate that his method owes more to historical and institutional economics and that his concept of state-society relations was in fact derived from Madison's Tenth Federalist. Barrow reconstructs Beard's theory of American political development using his concept of realistic dialectics, which viewed the clash between democracy (Jeffersonianism) and capitalism (Hamiltonianism) as the engine of American political development. During the 1930s, Beard suggested that the United States was making the transition to a higher form of social and industrial democracy that would supersede the contradiction of American political development. Notably, Beard was a critic of the New Deal and the liberal welfare state, because they failed to reconstruct the economic relations that reproduce inequalities of income, status, and power.Beard went on to voice his concern that at crucial junctures in American history, class struggle is diverted into international conflicts as popular leaders back down from a direct confrontation with the dominant capitalist elite. He analyzes American foreign policy as an extension of domestic economic policy and, in particular, a result of the failures of domestic economic policy. Beard's conception of American history plays itself out in a tragic cycle of imperialism and diversion that left him a disenchanted realist. This incisive study will be of interest to those intrested in the evolution of historical thinking.

Being a Historian

Being a Historian PDF Author: James M. Banner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107021596
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Considers what aspiring and mature historians need to know about the discipline of history in the United States today.

Debunking Howard Zinn

Debunking Howard Zinn PDF Author: Mary Grabar
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1621578941
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States has sold more than 2.5 million copies. It is pushed by Hollywood celebrities, defended by university professors who know better, and assigned in high school and college classrooms to teach students that American history is nothing more than a litany of oppression, slavery, and exploitation. Zinn’s history is popular, but it is also massively wrong. Scholar Mary Grabar exposes just how wrong in her stunning new book Debunking Howard Zinn, which demolishes Zinn’s Marxist talking points that now dominate American education. In Debunking Howard Zinn, you’ll learn, contra Zinn: How Columbus was not a genocidal maniac, and was, in fact, a defender of Indians Why the American Indians were not feminist-communist sexual revolutionaries ahead of their time How the United States was founded to protect liberty, not white males’ ill-gotten wealth Why Americans of the “Greatest Generation” were not the equivalent of Nazi war criminals How the Viet Cong were not well-meaning community leaders advocating for local self-rule Why the Black Panthers were not civil rights leaders Grabar also reveals Zinn’s bag of dishonest rhetorical tricks: his slavish reliance on partisan history, explicit rejection of historical balance, and selective quotation of sources to make them say the exact opposite of what their authors intended. If you care about America’s past—and our future—you need this book.

Reading Like a Historian

Reading Like a Historian PDF Author: Sam Wineburg
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807772372
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
This practical resource shows you how to apply Sam Wineburgs highly acclaimed approach to teaching, "Reading Like a Historian," in your middle and high school classroom to increase academic literacy and spark students curiosity. Chapters cover key moments in American history, beginning with exploration and colonization and ending with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

More Than a Game

More Than a Game PDF Author: David K. Wiggins
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538114984
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
More than a Game discusses how African American men and women sought to participate in sport and what that participation meant to them, the African American community, and the United States more generally. Recognizing the complicated history of race in America and how sport can both divide and bring people together, the book chronicles the ways in which African Americans overcame racial discrimination to achieve success in an institution often described as America's only true meritocracy. African Americans have often glorified sport, viewing it as one of the few ways they can achieve a better life. In reality, while some African Americans found fame and fortune in sport, most struggled just to participate – let alone succeed at the highest levels of sport. Thus, the book has two basic themes. It discusses the varied experiences of African Americans in sport and how their participation has both reflected and changed views of race.

How History Gets Things Wrong

How History Gets Things Wrong PDF Author: Alex Rosenberg
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026234842X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Why we learn the wrong things from narrative history, and how our love for stories is hard-wired. To understand something, you need to know its history. Right? Wrong, says Alex Rosenberg in How History Gets Things Wrong. Feeling especially well-informed after reading a book of popular history on the best-seller list? Don't. Narrative history is always, always wrong. It's not just incomplete or inaccurate but deeply wrong, as wrong as Ptolemaic astronomy. We no longer believe that the earth is the center of the universe. Why do we still believe in historical narrative? Our attachment to history as a vehicle for understanding has a long Darwinian pedigree and a genetic basis. Our love of stories is hard-wired. Neuroscience reveals that human evolution shaped a tool useful for survival into a defective theory of human nature. Stories historians tell, Rosenberg continues, are not only wrong but harmful. Israel and Palestine, for example, have dueling narratives of dispossession that prevent one side from compromising with the other. Henry Kissinger applied lessons drawn from the Congress of Vienna to American foreign policy with disastrous results. Human evolution improved primate mind reading—the ability to anticipate the behavior of others, whether predators, prey, or cooperators—to get us to the top of the African food chain. Now, however, this hard-wired capacity makes us think we can understand history—what the Kaiser was thinking in 1914, why Hitler declared war on the United States—by uncovering the narratives of what happened and why. In fact, Rosenberg argues, we will only understand history if we don't make it into a story.

A Little Book for New Historians

A Little Book for New Historians PDF Author: Robert Tracy McKenzie
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830872450
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 123

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Book Description
Veteran historian Robert Tracy McKenzie offers a concise, clear, and beautifully written introduction to the study of history. Laying out necessary skills, methods, and attitudes for historians in training, this resource is loaded with concrete examples and insightful principles that show how the study of history—when faithfully pursued—can shape your heart as well as your mind.

Visions of History

Visions of History PDF Author: Edward Palmer Thompson
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719010675
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description


Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone)

Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone) PDF Author: Sam Wineburg
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022635735X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
A look at how to teach history in the age of easily accessible—but not always reliable—information. Let’s start with two truths about our era that are so inescapable as to have become clichés: We are surrounded by more readily available information than ever before. And a huge percent of it is inaccurate. Some of the bad info is well-meaning but ignorant. Some of it is deliberately deceptive. All of it is pernicious. With the Internet at our fingertips, what’s a teacher of history to do? In Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone), professor Sam Wineburg has the answers, beginning with this: We can’t stick to the same old read-the-chapter-answer-the-question snoozefest. If we want to educate citizens who can separate fact from fake, we have to equip them with new tools. Historical thinking, Wineburg shows, has nothing to do with the ability to memorize facts. Instead, it’s an orientation to the world that cultivates reasoned skepticism and counters our tendency to confirm our biases. Wineburg lays out a mine-filled landscape, but one that with care, attention, and awareness, we can learn to navigate. The future of the past may rest on our screens. But its fate rests in our hands. Praise for Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone) “If every K-12 teacher of history and social studies read just three chapters of this book—”Crazy for History,” “Changing History . . . One Classroom at a Time,” and “Why Google Can’t Save Us” —the ensuing transformation of our populace would save our democracy.” —James W. Lowen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me and Teaching What Really Happened “A sobering and urgent report from the leading expert on how American history is taught in the nation’s schools. . . . A bracing, edifying, and vital book.” —Jill Lepore, New Yorker staff writer and author of These Truths “Wineburg is a true innovator who has thought more deeply about the relevance of history to the Internet—and vice versa—than any other scholar I know. Anyone interested in the uses and abuses of history today has a duty to read this book.” —Niall Ferguson, senior fellow, Hoover Institution, and author of The Ascent of Money and Civilization

A People's History of the United States

A People's History of the United States PDF Author: Howard Zinn
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 9780060528423
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 764

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Book Description
Since its original landmark publication in 1980, A People's History of the United States has been chronicling American history from the bottom up, throwing out the official version of history taught in schools -- with its emphasis on great men in high places -- to focus on the street, the home, and the, workplace. Known for its lively, clear prose as well as its scholarly research, A People's History is the only volume to tell America's story from the point of view of -- and in the words of -- America's women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers. As historian Howard Zinn shows, many of our country's greatest battles -- the fights for a fair wage, an eight-hour workday, child-labor laws, health and safety standards, universal suffrage, women's rights, racial equality -- were carried out at the grassroots level, against bloody resistance. Covering Christopher Columbus's arrival through President Clinton's first term, A People's History of the United States, which was nominated for the American Book Award in 1981, features insightful analysis of the most important events in our history. Revised, updated, and featuring a new after, word by the author, this special twentieth anniversary edition continues Zinn's important contribution to a complete and balanced understanding of American history.