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May. 30th, 2012 11:49 amPracticing History by Barbara Tuchman (11). Tuchman's approach to writing history, this set of collected essays on the process and practice of writing history reminds me, is very close to my own. History doesn't have to have some greater goal; it is an important enough task to examine, remember, and retell the events of the past without justifying it through some notion of predicting the future. One hopes that, by looking hard enough at the past, we will manage not to make exactly the same mistakes we have made (just new and different ones), but history should not be looked up on as some sort of Hari Selden-like psycho-science that will allow us to foretell what is to come in painstaking and unquestionable detail. History does need to be readable, however; it needs to eschew jargon and purposeful obfuscation for the sake of self-aggrandisement. It needs to be based in fact as much as possible. It needs to make its own limitations clear. And, I would agree with Tuchman, the best history is written as much as possible from primary sources; secondary sources are excellent for providing background, but overreliance on them can tilt the historian's viewpoint too much, so that he or she ends up writing someone else's view of the story, not their own. I don't share Tuchman's skepticism and ridicule (suggesting an underlying fear and incomprehension) of the role of computers and quantitative analysis as historical tools, but I would agree their overuse can become stultifying and end up becoming simply data collection, without the necessary analysis and synthesis that is the point of doing the research in the first place.
Tuchman shows, in her adulatory and starry-eyed essay on Israel that her choice to stop Bible and Sword at the beginning of the First World War and not cover the Mandate and the War of Independence was a wise one. She is utterly unable to be objective about anything involving Israel. I would also wish that she had not filled the latter portion of the book with her political essays about Vietnam; I would far rather have read more of her writing about history itself. But I did enjoy her commencement address to a Williams graduating class about a decade before my time, arguing that the response of academic America to the military as a result of its dislike of the war was exactly the wrong way to deal with the issues, morally questionable and totally ineffective.
The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I by Edward M. Coffman (12). Not a new book (published 1968), but new to me, and I enjoyed it a great deal. It provided all the level of detail I wanted in an overview of the military participation of America in the Great War. Sections deal with the problems of expanding the armed forces, of the organization of the civilian offices, of the reorganization and expansion of the General Staff, of the role of the Navy and the air forces in the war, and then a long portion on the training, development, transport, and employment of the Army in France and the events of each of its major campaigns. There are skillful portraits of several figures (Pershing, of course, but other military men like Hunter Liggett, George Marshall, Billy Mitchell, and Clarence Edwards, and civilians like Newton D. Baker and Josephus Daniels).
In Progress:
Doom Castle by Neil Munro
Hostile Skies: A Combat History of the American Air Service in World War I by James J. Hudson
Drinking Arak Off an Ayatollah's Beard: A Journey Through the Inside-Out Worlds of Iran and Afghanistan by Nicholas Jubber
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Through a Howling Wilderness: Benedict Arnold's March to Quebec, 1775 by Thomas Desjardins
Foch: Supreme Allied Commander in the Great War by Michael S. Neiberg
The Western Front: Ordinary Soldiers and the Defining Battles of World War I by Richard Holmes
Laxdaela Saga
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle
Shards of Empire by Susan Schwartz
In the Skies of Nomonhan: Japan versus Russia, May - September 1939 by Dimitar Nedialkov
The Lily Hand And Other Stories by Edith Pargeter
Understanding China by John Bryan Starr
The Williamite Wars in Ireland, 1688-1691 by John Childs
Theoretical Criminology by George B. Vold et al.
Knights of the Cross; or, Krzyzacy by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Tales of Terror and Mystery by Arthur Conan Doyle
Removed from the list
A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin: I have tried three or four times to read this book; I am now giving up and putting it in the sell/recycle pile. Helprin can conjure up some beautiful imagery, but his characters are tiresome, unsympathetic, and unbelievable. I found myself wanting to throw the book across the room, it was so cloying--the central character is what you would get if you put Carlos Casteneda, Yoda, and Peter Pan.
Tuchman shows, in her adulatory and starry-eyed essay on Israel that her choice to stop Bible and Sword at the beginning of the First World War and not cover the Mandate and the War of Independence was a wise one. She is utterly unable to be objective about anything involving Israel. I would also wish that she had not filled the latter portion of the book with her political essays about Vietnam; I would far rather have read more of her writing about history itself. But I did enjoy her commencement address to a Williams graduating class about a decade before my time, arguing that the response of academic America to the military as a result of its dislike of the war was exactly the wrong way to deal with the issues, morally questionable and totally ineffective.
The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I by Edward M. Coffman (12). Not a new book (published 1968), but new to me, and I enjoyed it a great deal. It provided all the level of detail I wanted in an overview of the military participation of America in the Great War. Sections deal with the problems of expanding the armed forces, of the organization of the civilian offices, of the reorganization and expansion of the General Staff, of the role of the Navy and the air forces in the war, and then a long portion on the training, development, transport, and employment of the Army in France and the events of each of its major campaigns. There are skillful portraits of several figures (Pershing, of course, but other military men like Hunter Liggett, George Marshall, Billy Mitchell, and Clarence Edwards, and civilians like Newton D. Baker and Josephus Daniels).
In Progress:
Doom Castle by Neil Munro
Hostile Skies: A Combat History of the American Air Service in World War I by James J. Hudson
Drinking Arak Off an Ayatollah's Beard: A Journey Through the Inside-Out Worlds of Iran and Afghanistan by Nicholas Jubber
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Through a Howling Wilderness: Benedict Arnold's March to Quebec, 1775 by Thomas Desjardins
Foch: Supreme Allied Commander in the Great War by Michael S. Neiberg
The Western Front: Ordinary Soldiers and the Defining Battles of World War I by Richard Holmes
Laxdaela Saga
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle
Shards of Empire by Susan Schwartz
In the Skies of Nomonhan: Japan versus Russia, May - September 1939 by Dimitar Nedialkov
The Lily Hand And Other Stories by Edith Pargeter
Understanding China by John Bryan Starr
The Williamite Wars in Ireland, 1688-1691 by John Childs
Theoretical Criminology by George B. Vold et al.
Knights of the Cross; or, Krzyzacy by Henryk Sienkiewicz
Tales of Terror and Mystery by Arthur Conan Doyle
Removed from the list
A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin: I have tried three or four times to read this book; I am now giving up and putting it in the sell/recycle pile. Helprin can conjure up some beautiful imagery, but his characters are tiresome, unsympathetic, and unbelievable. I found myself wanting to throw the book across the room, it was so cloying--the central character is what you would get if you put Carlos Casteneda, Yoda, and Peter Pan.
