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The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History
An analysis of the practice and art of historical documentation evaluates the contributions of some of the world's most important historians, explaining how the modern world is requiring key changes to the discipline of recording history. 30,000 first printing.
323 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2008
42 people are currently reading
866 people want to read
About the author
Gordon S. Wood
56 books534 followersGordon Stewart Wood is an American historian and professor at Brown University. He is a recipient of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992). His book The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (1969) won the 1970 Bancroft Prize. In 2010, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
March 2, 2009
Growing up is really funny. A lot of the surprise of it for me has been in realizing my enemies are not who I thought they were. Do you know what I mean? When you're a kid, it's all so clear who you despise and who are your friends, but when you get older you finally stop and look around and realize the people you trust and admire the most haven't even heard of your favorite bands, and that the two of you would never have spoken to each other at age fifteen. And today there's a new set of evils and enemies, so it's not that you're more tolerant now -- though maybe you are -- but more that the lines are in different places. To be your grown-up enemy, people actually have to do something bad. Your friends these days may listen to Coldplay or shop at J. Crew -- hell, you shop at J. Crew -- and may even be ornery, conservative old scholars who despise postmodernism, something you never could've fathomed back when you were twenty. But that's how things go. When you were twenty, you were struggling with constraints and conditions you could not understand at the time. You were bound by your context, limited by your day. To look back accurately at that era would demand what Gordon Wood calls a "historical sense":
To be able to see the participants of the past in this comprehensive way, to see them in the context of their own time, to describe their blindness and folly with sympathy, to recognize the extent to which they were caught up in changing circumstances over which they had little control, and to realize the degree to which they created results they never intended -- to know all this about the past and to be able to relate it without anachronistic distortion to our present is what is meant by having a historical sense. (pp 11-12).
Wood's concept of history reminds me a little of Tolstoy's, but without the God, in that he's very focused on the limitations of historical actors in understanding their situations and controlling events. Wood writes that "the drama, indeed the tragedy, of history comes from our understanding of the tension that existed between the conscious wills and intentions of the participants in the past and the underlying conditions that constrained their actions and shaped their future" (p. 11). In light of this, it's not surprising that he's pretty down on all social scientific efforts to use history as a means for trying to predict or control the future. This, Wood growls, is NOT the purpose of the past; it is not what history is for.
The only thing that makes Wood angrier than efforts to use history for unauthorized purposes is any suggestion that history as traditionally practiced is useless, irresponsible, deficient, or futile. I'm personally used to people either loving or mocking postmodernism; Wood does neither. He takes postmodernism very, very seriously.... and he HATES it.
The Purpose of the Past comprises 21 of Wood's book reviews, starting in 1981 and going up to 2007, and makes for a nice little history-of-historiography itself. One of my favorite chapters is Wood's review of Michael Warner's Letters of the Republic, a torturedly admiring anti-postmodernist review of a postmodern history, written with such heart that you can almost hear Wood's blood pressure climbing page-by-page. I conjured a clear image of perspiring Wood wiping away angry tears as he bemoaned Warner's burial of excellent historical arguments beneath an avalanche of trendy pomo detritus:
It is ironic, to say the least, that scholars eager to deconstruct "texts" in order to expose the ways they wield power in our society should themselves create texts that mask and obscure much of what they want to say. And that bright young scholars like Warner should be induced by the fashions of their discipline to use this jargon is especially poignant form of "hegemonic coercion."
Warner and other literary critics believe, no doubt, that to look at the world in new ways requires new words and new conceptions. But in the case of Warner's book, at least, this is not true. Most of his "new historicist" ideas about the constructed nature of reality are the stock-in-trade assumptions of good historians, and demand only a good historical imagination to be made effective. All the intricacy and subtlety of his argument, all his many insights into the nature of literature and public life in eighteenth-century America, are not dependent on post-Marxist and "deconstruction" theories and the new postmodern jargon; they easily and more clearly could have been expressed in ordinary language. (pp. 88-89)
See, this is what I mean! When you're a teenager or young adult, the last thing you want is some stern, rather cranky, professorial old man with a clear, elegant writing style to stride calmly into your coke-sex-and-Foucault Spring Break party to tell everyone there to settle down. But then you get a few years of mileage on you, and you look around at all the chaotic shenanigans and yammering on, and realize maybe that's exactly what you do want.
I'm not saying I agree with everything Wood says ('cause I don't), and I don't necessarily recommend reading all these essays one after another like I did ('cause I don't), but I did really enjoy this book, and I especially recommend it to people of my own generation and educational background. I grew up in Berkeley, California, where the only thing they really taught us about Dead White Men was that they kept slaves and spread syphilis. When I read Wood whining about some survey of college seniors finding only 34% could identify George Washington as an American general at the battle of Yorktown and only 23% knew James Madison was the Father of the Constitution, I was like, "What's Yorktown? Who's Madison?" (Of course I know who George Washington is -- we covered the Civil War a little bit in college!) I am definitely the sorry product of the all-social-history diet that Gordon Wood loses sleep over, so I appreciated getting a tour of some Revolutionary-era American history. I think I am a bit the better -- and older and wiser -- for it.
To be able to see the participants of the past in this comprehensive way, to see them in the context of their own time, to describe their blindness and folly with sympathy, to recognize the extent to which they were caught up in changing circumstances over which they had little control, and to realize the degree to which they created results they never intended -- to know all this about the past and to be able to relate it without anachronistic distortion to our present is what is meant by having a historical sense. (pp 11-12).
Wood's concept of history reminds me a little of Tolstoy's, but without the God, in that he's very focused on the limitations of historical actors in understanding their situations and controlling events. Wood writes that "the drama, indeed the tragedy, of history comes from our understanding of the tension that existed between the conscious wills and intentions of the participants in the past and the underlying conditions that constrained their actions and shaped their future" (p. 11). In light of this, it's not surprising that he's pretty down on all social scientific efforts to use history as a means for trying to predict or control the future. This, Wood growls, is NOT the purpose of the past; it is not what history is for.
The only thing that makes Wood angrier than efforts to use history for unauthorized purposes is any suggestion that history as traditionally practiced is useless, irresponsible, deficient, or futile. I'm personally used to people either loving or mocking postmodernism; Wood does neither. He takes postmodernism very, very seriously.... and he HATES it.
The Purpose of the Past comprises 21 of Wood's book reviews, starting in 1981 and going up to 2007, and makes for a nice little history-of-historiography itself. One of my favorite chapters is Wood's review of Michael Warner's Letters of the Republic, a torturedly admiring anti-postmodernist review of a postmodern history, written with such heart that you can almost hear Wood's blood pressure climbing page-by-page. I conjured a clear image of perspiring Wood wiping away angry tears as he bemoaned Warner's burial of excellent historical arguments beneath an avalanche of trendy pomo detritus:
It is ironic, to say the least, that scholars eager to deconstruct "texts" in order to expose the ways they wield power in our society should themselves create texts that mask and obscure much of what they want to say. And that bright young scholars like Warner should be induced by the fashions of their discipline to use this jargon is especially poignant form of "hegemonic coercion."
Warner and other literary critics believe, no doubt, that to look at the world in new ways requires new words and new conceptions. But in the case of Warner's book, at least, this is not true. Most of his "new historicist" ideas about the constructed nature of reality are the stock-in-trade assumptions of good historians, and demand only a good historical imagination to be made effective. All the intricacy and subtlety of his argument, all his many insights into the nature of literature and public life in eighteenth-century America, are not dependent on post-Marxist and "deconstruction" theories and the new postmodern jargon; they easily and more clearly could have been expressed in ordinary language. (pp. 88-89)
See, this is what I mean! When you're a teenager or young adult, the last thing you want is some stern, rather cranky, professorial old man with a clear, elegant writing style to stride calmly into your coke-sex-and-Foucault Spring Break party to tell everyone there to settle down. But then you get a few years of mileage on you, and you look around at all the chaotic shenanigans and yammering on, and realize maybe that's exactly what you do want.
I'm not saying I agree with everything Wood says ('cause I don't), and I don't necessarily recommend reading all these essays one after another like I did ('cause I don't), but I did really enjoy this book, and I especially recommend it to people of my own generation and educational background. I grew up in Berkeley, California, where the only thing they really taught us about Dead White Men was that they kept slaves and spread syphilis. When I read Wood whining about some survey of college seniors finding only 34% could identify George Washington as an American general at the battle of Yorktown and only 23% knew James Madison was the Father of the Constitution, I was like, "What's Yorktown? Who's Madison?" (Of course I know who George Washington is -- we covered the Civil War a little bit in college!) I am definitely the sorry product of the all-social-history diet that Gordon Wood loses sleep over, so I appreciated getting a tour of some Revolutionary-era American history. I think I am a bit the better -- and older and wiser -- for it.
August 29, 2023
History And Reviewing
I always enjoy and learn from the writings of American historian Gordon Wood. After reading Wood's most recent books, his two-volume edition of John Adams' "Revolutionary Writings" for the Library of America, and his new volume of essays on the importance of ideas to the American Revolution, "The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States", I turned to Wood's slightly earlier book with the provocative title "The Purpose of the Past" (2008).
The title of the book suggests a volume devoted to the practice of writing history or to the philosophy of history. Wood indeed addresses these large subjects but in an unsystematic, piecemeal way. The volume is a collection of 21 book reviews Wood wrote for educated non-specialist readers and published in magazines such as "The New York Review" and "The New Republic". The reviews begin with Wood's April 2, 1981 review of Garry Wills' "Explaining America" published in the "New York Review" and conclude with a June 28, 2007, review in the "New York Review" of two books: "Dark Bargain" by Lawerence Goldstone and "American Taxation, American Slavery" by Robin Einhorn. The volume begins with an Introduction in which Wood addresses his approach to understanding history that informs his reviews and larger writings. Following each review, Wood offers thoughts on its reception and on Wood's current views of how he understood the book he had reviewed earlier. It would have been good to hear Wood discuss his views on writing and understanding history more completely and systematically rather than in the context of reviews of different books written over more than 25 years. But what he has given the reader remains valuable.
The book is highly interesting for its approach to history and for its approach to writing reviews. I will try to offer some thoughts on each. Wood's book offers the opportunity to get acquainted with some of the best contemporary historical writing, largely involving the Revolutionary Era. Wood's understanding of this period and his erudition are prodigious and his views balanced. Much about the period can be learned from reading the articles included here.
In the introduction and the reviews Wood offers his view of what history is, a discipline which endeavors to understand the past in all its complexity, and its value. For Wood, history cannot be used for direct lessons on contemporary issues and it is a mistake to read such issues into one's approach to the past. Wood eloquently describes the value of history as follows (p. 14)
"History is not just comfort food for the anxious present. Yet it does offer a way of coming to terms with an anxious present and an unpredictable future. Realizing the extent to which people in the past struggled with circumstances that they scarcely understood is perhaps the most important insight flowing from historical study. To understand the past in all its complexity is to acquire historical wisdom and humility and indeed a tragic sense of life. A tragic sense does not mean a sad or pessimistic sense of life; it means a sense of the limitations of life."
Many of Wood's reviews address books in which he finds that the author has unsuccessfully tried to import current concerns and issues into the writing of history. Thus, while Wood welcomes the many current studies that explore the roles of gender, slavery, and poverty in early America, he rejects what he sees as the frequent efforts of authors to understand these issues through present day concerns rather than through historical circumstance. Wood also addresses philosophical ideas of postmodernism, relativism, or deconstruction that have gained prominence in some historical writing. He wants to reject these theories, it seems to me, as unworkable and to return, however tentatively, to a theory of history and theory of knowledge in which the historian assumes it is possible to gain some accurate knowledge of the past, if only in approximation. Wood sees the value in expanded narrative history (expanded to include underrepresented groups such as women or minorities) which emphasizes purpose and broad historical trends rather presenting history as the study of insular groups.
Now, I want to turn briefly to reviewing. I was glad to see this collection of Wood's reviews because it made me think of reader reviews here on Amazon/Goodreads and on what I and my fellow reader reviewers try to do with them. Wood says of writing the types of reviews collected in this book (p. 1):
"Although such long reviews take a considerable amount of time, ... I have never regretted writing them. Not only do such lengthy reviews for nonacademic journals require you to come to terms with the larger implications of the book under review, but they force you to convey what you say in language that is intelligible to general readers. Writing reviews for a lay readership is a marvelously stimulating experience, and all historians ought to try to do it."
Wood's reviews tend to be in the range of 4000 words or more, substantially longer than Amazon reviews. And unlike Amazon reviews, written by a lay readership, Wood is a consummate student of his subject. There is much to be learned still in the way Wood tries to explain the content and the approach of a book. Wood offers substantial detail about the works he reviews, frequently with references to other works by the author. Wood combines his exposition with criticism and analysis, of the types I suggested above. It is highly valuable to see Wood do this, but there are limitations. Wood brings to his reviews his own vast learning and perspective. While I tend to sympathize greatly with his approach to history and philosophy, Wood proves to be a somewhat harsher critic in some cases than I thought he might be. He tends, I think, to reduce other authors to what he is trying to do and to his understanding of the historical enterprise when, in some case, the authors are trying to do something different which may not be history, strictly, but may still have value. An example is Wood's October 30, 2000, review of John Diggins' book, "On Hallowed Ground: Abraham Lincoln and the Foundations of American History." This review interested me because it is the only book Wood reviewed in this collection that I have also reviewed. (I have read but not reviewed some of the other books Wood discusses.) When I revisited my review of Diggins, I found some agreement between my views and Wood's. Yet I was more sympathetic, perhaps wrongly so, than this distinguished author. I thought that in some cases, Wood tended to approach the books he reviewed entirely from his own perspective without trying as hard as he might have done to get inside the mind of the author. It seemed to me that a more internalized approach might also have value in reviewing. Writing reviews is a way of understanding and critiquing a book so that the reader can judge whether he or she wants to pursue it further. But it is also, on howsoever small a scale, a free standing work by the author of the review.
I enjoyed reading Wood's collection of reviews in order to learn about history and its writing and to think about the writing of reviews and its purpose, both by wonderfully professional historians and by amateurs who review online.
Robin Friedman
I always enjoy and learn from the writings of American historian Gordon Wood. After reading Wood's most recent books, his two-volume edition of John Adams' "Revolutionary Writings" for the Library of America, and his new volume of essays on the importance of ideas to the American Revolution, "The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States", I turned to Wood's slightly earlier book with the provocative title "The Purpose of the Past" (2008).
The title of the book suggests a volume devoted to the practice of writing history or to the philosophy of history. Wood indeed addresses these large subjects but in an unsystematic, piecemeal way. The volume is a collection of 21 book reviews Wood wrote for educated non-specialist readers and published in magazines such as "The New York Review" and "The New Republic". The reviews begin with Wood's April 2, 1981 review of Garry Wills' "Explaining America" published in the "New York Review" and conclude with a June 28, 2007, review in the "New York Review" of two books: "Dark Bargain" by Lawerence Goldstone and "American Taxation, American Slavery" by Robin Einhorn. The volume begins with an Introduction in which Wood addresses his approach to understanding history that informs his reviews and larger writings. Following each review, Wood offers thoughts on its reception and on Wood's current views of how he understood the book he had reviewed earlier. It would have been good to hear Wood discuss his views on writing and understanding history more completely and systematically rather than in the context of reviews of different books written over more than 25 years. But what he has given the reader remains valuable.
The book is highly interesting for its approach to history and for its approach to writing reviews. I will try to offer some thoughts on each. Wood's book offers the opportunity to get acquainted with some of the best contemporary historical writing, largely involving the Revolutionary Era. Wood's understanding of this period and his erudition are prodigious and his views balanced. Much about the period can be learned from reading the articles included here.
In the introduction and the reviews Wood offers his view of what history is, a discipline which endeavors to understand the past in all its complexity, and its value. For Wood, history cannot be used for direct lessons on contemporary issues and it is a mistake to read such issues into one's approach to the past. Wood eloquently describes the value of history as follows (p. 14)
"History is not just comfort food for the anxious present. Yet it does offer a way of coming to terms with an anxious present and an unpredictable future. Realizing the extent to which people in the past struggled with circumstances that they scarcely understood is perhaps the most important insight flowing from historical study. To understand the past in all its complexity is to acquire historical wisdom and humility and indeed a tragic sense of life. A tragic sense does not mean a sad or pessimistic sense of life; it means a sense of the limitations of life."
Many of Wood's reviews address books in which he finds that the author has unsuccessfully tried to import current concerns and issues into the writing of history. Thus, while Wood welcomes the many current studies that explore the roles of gender, slavery, and poverty in early America, he rejects what he sees as the frequent efforts of authors to understand these issues through present day concerns rather than through historical circumstance. Wood also addresses philosophical ideas of postmodernism, relativism, or deconstruction that have gained prominence in some historical writing. He wants to reject these theories, it seems to me, as unworkable and to return, however tentatively, to a theory of history and theory of knowledge in which the historian assumes it is possible to gain some accurate knowledge of the past, if only in approximation. Wood sees the value in expanded narrative history (expanded to include underrepresented groups such as women or minorities) which emphasizes purpose and broad historical trends rather presenting history as the study of insular groups.
Now, I want to turn briefly to reviewing. I was glad to see this collection of Wood's reviews because it made me think of reader reviews here on Amazon/Goodreads and on what I and my fellow reader reviewers try to do with them. Wood says of writing the types of reviews collected in this book (p. 1):
"Although such long reviews take a considerable amount of time, ... I have never regretted writing them. Not only do such lengthy reviews for nonacademic journals require you to come to terms with the larger implications of the book under review, but they force you to convey what you say in language that is intelligible to general readers. Writing reviews for a lay readership is a marvelously stimulating experience, and all historians ought to try to do it."
Wood's reviews tend to be in the range of 4000 words or more, substantially longer than Amazon reviews. And unlike Amazon reviews, written by a lay readership, Wood is a consummate student of his subject. There is much to be learned still in the way Wood tries to explain the content and the approach of a book. Wood offers substantial detail about the works he reviews, frequently with references to other works by the author. Wood combines his exposition with criticism and analysis, of the types I suggested above. It is highly valuable to see Wood do this, but there are limitations. Wood brings to his reviews his own vast learning and perspective. While I tend to sympathize greatly with his approach to history and philosophy, Wood proves to be a somewhat harsher critic in some cases than I thought he might be. He tends, I think, to reduce other authors to what he is trying to do and to his understanding of the historical enterprise when, in some case, the authors are trying to do something different which may not be history, strictly, but may still have value. An example is Wood's October 30, 2000, review of John Diggins' book, "On Hallowed Ground: Abraham Lincoln and the Foundations of American History." This review interested me because it is the only book Wood reviewed in this collection that I have also reviewed. (I have read but not reviewed some of the other books Wood discusses.) When I revisited my review of Diggins, I found some agreement between my views and Wood's. Yet I was more sympathetic, perhaps wrongly so, than this distinguished author. I thought that in some cases, Wood tended to approach the books he reviewed entirely from his own perspective without trying as hard as he might have done to get inside the mind of the author. It seemed to me that a more internalized approach might also have value in reviewing. Writing reviews is a way of understanding and critiquing a book so that the reader can judge whether he or she wants to pursue it further. But it is also, on howsoever small a scale, a free standing work by the author of the review.
I enjoyed reading Wood's collection of reviews in order to learn about history and its writing and to think about the writing of reviews and its purpose, both by wonderfully professional historians and by amateurs who review online.
Robin Friedman
February 18, 2009
gordon wood is the greatest living historian and one of the top living essayists. for some reason there’s a hardcover version on amazon for $18 and then the same edition for only $6.99.
http://www.amazon.com/Purpose-Past-Re...
order this! trust me. if you’ve ever wondered about the relative nature of history, about the (im)possibility of truth, the relationship between ideas and revolution, the stupidity of the far left, the stupidity of the far right, the perils and/or necessity of american exceptionalism, marxism, multiculturalism, post-modernism, race class gender and how they relate to reality and history... (and written with such clarity and force and understanding and erudition and insight it'll make you wilt) - if a strange world of warring historians duking it out in books and journals and lectures and college campuses sounds in any way strange and fantastic and cool… order this.
gordon wood presents a major problem b/c he gets a seat at my ‘table of people I’d like to eat dinner with, drink scotch with, and argue all night with’ and that means i gotta kick someone out. i think it might be mario vargas llosa. sorry.
i’m also gonna do something wood would never do. plagiarize (with some minor edits). check it:
"If something terrible happens to me one day, and all that's left is my body, and if, around the same time, something terrible should happen to Gordon Wood and all that's left is his brain, I would hope that somehow medical science and luck would combine, and allow these terrible accidents to be resolved through a relatively happy solution, by which one of us (not Mr. Wood) would be greatly improved."
this book really deserves a proper review. i see it sits on jessica's 'currently reading' shelf -- she, of course, has a much sharper brain than myself and a much greater command of the english language. do it up, lady.
http://www.amazon.com/Purpose-Past-Re...
order this! trust me. if you’ve ever wondered about the relative nature of history, about the (im)possibility of truth, the relationship between ideas and revolution, the stupidity of the far left, the stupidity of the far right, the perils and/or necessity of american exceptionalism, marxism, multiculturalism, post-modernism, race class gender and how they relate to reality and history... (and written with such clarity and force and understanding and erudition and insight it'll make you wilt) - if a strange world of warring historians duking it out in books and journals and lectures and college campuses sounds in any way strange and fantastic and cool… order this.
gordon wood presents a major problem b/c he gets a seat at my ‘table of people I’d like to eat dinner with, drink scotch with, and argue all night with’ and that means i gotta kick someone out. i think it might be mario vargas llosa. sorry.
i’m also gonna do something wood would never do. plagiarize (with some minor edits). check it:
"If something terrible happens to me one day, and all that's left is my body, and if, around the same time, something terrible should happen to Gordon Wood and all that's left is his brain, I would hope that somehow medical science and luck would combine, and allow these terrible accidents to be resolved through a relatively happy solution, by which one of us (not Mr. Wood) would be greatly improved."
this book really deserves a proper review. i see it sits on jessica's 'currently reading' shelf -- she, of course, has a much sharper brain than myself and a much greater command of the english language. do it up, lady.
May 27, 2008
This is a volume of reviews, all previously published in the New York Review of Books and another magazine, of books on American history. Its author is a prominent historian in his own right, and the pleasure of the read is both in the insightful historiography and in the historical content. Like reading any good book reviews, you learn not only about the books reviewed but also about their subject matter.
Yet Wood is also a crusader against post-modernism and an advocate of good, old-fashioned narrative history to a degree that caused me considerable cognitive dissonance along with the pleasure of his good writing. By its conclusion, I felt enormously enriched by a broader understanding of historiography and a little knowledge about a lot of perspectives on American history, and a much of history books for my to-read shelf, but I can't say I was persuaded by the wholesale dismissal of trends in contemporary historical scholarship.
Yet Wood is also a crusader against post-modernism and an advocate of good, old-fashioned narrative history to a degree that caused me considerable cognitive dissonance along with the pleasure of his good writing. By its conclusion, I felt enormously enriched by a broader understanding of historiography and a little knowledge about a lot of perspectives on American history, and a much of history books for my to-read shelf, but I can't say I was persuaded by the wholesale dismissal of trends in contemporary historical scholarship.
December 13, 2016
By all standards, this really should be a dry and dusty tome. It's a collection of book reviews by eminent early American historian Gordon S. Wood. What this book does however is display the various theoretical and philosophically lenses used to analyze history in the past 30 years. It's an excellent primer on various strands of historical thought (cultural history, multiculturalism, presentism, and postmodernism to name a few). If you are unfamiliar with these terms, this cogent, sophisticated, yet highly readable collection elucidates them all for you. I, surprisingly, found it hard to put down. Although you may or may not always agree with Wood, his insights and critical faculties are always sharp, and his knowledge immense. Once could read it just to obtain the brilliant summations of 22 prominent books of history from the recent past. Absolutely gratifying.
December 31, 2008
Unusual and ingenious treatise on historiography. This book is actually a collection of book reviews, each focusing not only on the book itself, but on a different historiographical issue or trend (microhistory, multicultural history, postmodern history, myth, presentism, to name a few).
Wood's mastery of the material and his congenial style made this so very enjoyable. Having the subject books there as examples grounds his presentation of the abstract concepts (and alerted me to some good suggested reading).
If I were teaching an introductory course on history/historiography I would make this the primary text book, then require each student to read one of the books Wood reviews and write a paper assessing the book in light of his arguments.
Wood's mastery of the material and his congenial style made this so very enjoyable. Having the subject books there as examples grounds his presentation of the abstract concepts (and alerted me to some good suggested reading).
If I were teaching an introductory course on history/historiography I would make this the primary text book, then require each student to read one of the books Wood reviews and write a paper assessing the book in light of his arguments.
December 27, 2018
Review to follow.
November 26, 2015
Gordon S. Wood is godfather of the academics and hero of the popular writers, and for good reason.
He really knows everything he writes about, and he writes it really well.
More than anyone else, he can call B.S. on them. Any of them. He name drops like TMZ, decodes complex arguments like Robert Langdon, and writes it with an obsidian scalpel. All the while, he seems to view history as an ongoing game of Jeopardy ("I'll take Heuristic Approaches to Analyzing Scottish influencers of the Founders, for a thousand, Alex.").
He's shockingly critical without being mean, and seems to know as much or more about every historical topic than the authors spending years of their lives researching and writing. Yes, he's dismissive of "post-modern" history, and so he especially enjoys poking at Gary Nash, Jill Lepore, Pauline Meier and others (although quite restrained in his critical phrasing of the conservative David Hackett Fischer). Still, it comes across as an aging uncle at Thanksgiving dinner, embracing a spirited discourse rather than trying to shut down the conversation.
Of course he comes across as arrogant, but it would be impossible not to given the historical literary tasks he takes on. And it just, plain works. Like, yeah, every time.
Wood's piece on Robert Middlekauff's The Glorious Cause is especially insightful -- it captures my feelings about the book perfectly while teaching me about the ins and outs and pitfalls of narrative history. That Woods' own bombastically ambitious Empire of Liberty follows The Glorious Cause in the Oxford History of the United States is interesting, if not TMZ creepy.
He really knows everything he writes about, and he writes it really well.
More than anyone else, he can call B.S. on them. Any of them. He name drops like TMZ, decodes complex arguments like Robert Langdon, and writes it with an obsidian scalpel. All the while, he seems to view history as an ongoing game of Jeopardy ("I'll take Heuristic Approaches to Analyzing Scottish influencers of the Founders, for a thousand, Alex.").
He's shockingly critical without being mean, and seems to know as much or more about every historical topic than the authors spending years of their lives researching and writing. Yes, he's dismissive of "post-modern" history, and so he especially enjoys poking at Gary Nash, Jill Lepore, Pauline Meier and others (although quite restrained in his critical phrasing of the conservative David Hackett Fischer). Still, it comes across as an aging uncle at Thanksgiving dinner, embracing a spirited discourse rather than trying to shut down the conversation.
Of course he comes across as arrogant, but it would be impossible not to given the historical literary tasks he takes on. And it just, plain works. Like, yeah, every time.
Wood's piece on Robert Middlekauff's The Glorious Cause is especially insightful -- it captures my feelings about the book perfectly while teaching me about the ins and outs and pitfalls of narrative history. That Woods' own bombastically ambitious Empire of Liberty follows The Glorious Cause in the Oxford History of the United States is interesting, if not TMZ creepy.
Want to read
June 8, 2010I skimmed through parts of this quickly at the bookstore and it bears further examination. It's a collection of Wood's reviews of various American history books for publications like The New York Review of Books, New Republic, and others. Some of these are probably still available free online; some are behind a subscription firewall. The nice thing here is that he gives each review an afterward that says stuff like, "Simon Schama was furious at me after this review but I still think he's a wonderful scholar..." (After reviewing Schama's book Dead Certainties, which mixed historical facts with utter fabrications, novelistically.) He says the same about Garry Wills, but I don't know why, after he eviscerates Wills's Explaining America: The Federalist for its faulty intellectual historiography.
August 16, 2008
Anybody who crusades against post-modernism is a fan of mine. I find it interesting how what, to a naive reader like myself, seems to be a straightforward historical book, inherently has a philosophical or intellectual bias. History is certainly more than just names and dates because narrative or interpretation always accompanies those names and facts. But narration and interpretation are inherently biased in some way, towards one perspective or another (or so it seems). Maybe this bias is unintentional on an author's part, but it's there nonetheless. Wood is sharp in being able to highlight what these biases are in each of his reviews.
March 6, 2009
This is a collection of Wood's book reviews over the years.
September 4, 2021
Eminent American historian Gordon Wood has compiled several of his book review of historical works from recent years together -- in some instances -- with responses from the authors of those books.
If you are at all interested in history, you might dip into this 300 page volume, both to enjoy Wood's rich and always informative proves as well as to marvel at the sheer variety of approaches historians employ in "telling the story."
Many, many years ago now I used to believe that there was no mystery in writing history for, after all, history was merely "writing down what happened."
If only!
There are, in fact, a great many ways of approaching "telling the story" even if one believes that they know "the story" after all. And that is not as easy as it may appear to the layperson. It is often incredibly difficult to determine "what happened," whether in accounting political intrigue, the story of a culture, or how a battle turned. One of the reasons is that the veracity -- and comprehension -- of one's sources must be determined. A general's plan for battle, for instance, may be of less importance than a private's recollection from within the confusing tumult of the fight itself.
And then there is the matter of perspective. Take our Civil War. Well into the 20th century historians taught versions that tended to remarkably echo the apologetic writings that had emerged in the South after that war that basically depicted it is a glorious "Lost Cause" and the critical period of Reconstruction that followed it as a disaster compounded by state legislatures filled with ignorant recently freed Black people and their white sympathizers who were intent primarily upon despoiling the South.
Today's narratives of the same period are much more truthful and fact-filled as more recent historians have paid more attention to the writings of Black participants in those events as well as more objective accounts from white historians who were not trying to grind an axe.
Also, in writing history, the scope and perspective must be determined by any author: how broad is the canvas one wishes to paint, for example, and how deeply is one going to go into citing first-person accounts as a principal means of advancing the narrative?
And then there are the numerous "corrective" histories that crop up every generation in which new historians bring to bear information and points of view either not known to previous historians or which were not in favor at the time. In telling American history, for example, we have excellent accounts that follow an older heroic narrative that focuses primarily on Great Men Advancing Noble Causes, a form of history that tends to ignore -- because it is thought less important -- the many forces working upon the people of the United States as well as many of those who disagreed with the dominant ideas of the time.
All of this and more is covered in Woods' writings, and I think all serious about reading -- and supporting the writing of -- sound history will find what he has to say of great interest.
This book is probably not the best place for someone less familiar with history in general -- or American history in particular -- to begin.
If you are at all interested in history, you might dip into this 300 page volume, both to enjoy Wood's rich and always informative proves as well as to marvel at the sheer variety of approaches historians employ in "telling the story."
Many, many years ago now I used to believe that there was no mystery in writing history for, after all, history was merely "writing down what happened."
If only!
There are, in fact, a great many ways of approaching "telling the story" even if one believes that they know "the story" after all. And that is not as easy as it may appear to the layperson. It is often incredibly difficult to determine "what happened," whether in accounting political intrigue, the story of a culture, or how a battle turned. One of the reasons is that the veracity -- and comprehension -- of one's sources must be determined. A general's plan for battle, for instance, may be of less importance than a private's recollection from within the confusing tumult of the fight itself.
And then there is the matter of perspective. Take our Civil War. Well into the 20th century historians taught versions that tended to remarkably echo the apologetic writings that had emerged in the South after that war that basically depicted it is a glorious "Lost Cause" and the critical period of Reconstruction that followed it as a disaster compounded by state legislatures filled with ignorant recently freed Black people and their white sympathizers who were intent primarily upon despoiling the South.
Today's narratives of the same period are much more truthful and fact-filled as more recent historians have paid more attention to the writings of Black participants in those events as well as more objective accounts from white historians who were not trying to grind an axe.
Also, in writing history, the scope and perspective must be determined by any author: how broad is the canvas one wishes to paint, for example, and how deeply is one going to go into citing first-person accounts as a principal means of advancing the narrative?
And then there are the numerous "corrective" histories that crop up every generation in which new historians bring to bear information and points of view either not known to previous historians or which were not in favor at the time. In telling American history, for example, we have excellent accounts that follow an older heroic narrative that focuses primarily on Great Men Advancing Noble Causes, a form of history that tends to ignore -- because it is thought less important -- the many forces working upon the people of the United States as well as many of those who disagreed with the dominant ideas of the time.
All of this and more is covered in Woods' writings, and I think all serious about reading -- and supporting the writing of -- sound history will find what he has to say of great interest.
This book is probably not the best place for someone less familiar with history in general -- or American history in particular -- to begin.
November 24, 2019
الكتاب عبارة عن مراجعات لكتب تاريخية كتبت عبر سنوات، وخلال تعليق المؤلف على تلك الكتب ومناهجها يجد القارئ فوائد منهجية، إلى جانب فوائد رؤية وجهات نظر مختلفة حول تفسير حدث ما. أنصح به المهتم بالتاريخ الأمريكي خاصة، فهو يدور حوله.
September 11, 2009
This book is actually a collection of book reviews that Gordon Wood has written over the past 30 years. The books reviewed are history, usually written by academic historians, and they usually are dealing with colonial America and the Revolutionary period (Wood’s own area of expertise). In these reviews he delves deeply into what the study of history is, what it strives to be, and what it can never be. It is a fascinating collection and it is one that I wish I had been exposed to many years ago when taking history in college. It provides an excellent roadmap of why the study is where it is and why. It also explains many of the problems that I had with academic history and why “good” history is so elusive.
Ultimately, Wood’s lament is that the study of history has been fragmented, perhaps hopelessly so, in the post-modernist, post-Marxist approaches that have dominated much of the social sciences and literary criticism over the past 40 years. He lays out a compelling case that these approaches are ill suited to a full understanding of the lessons of history. They are too narrow and too dismissive of the power that the past has in shaping decision-making in the past. However, he is equally as critical of the old narrative histories, which are now more like the popular histories on bestseller lists, that preceded modern academic approaches and delves into their serious limitations (history of political, social elites, and military operations). He sees the future as a blend of the two, but this in practice is a staggeringly difficult task. These combinations so far have primarily taken the form of “micro-histories”, also the blending of history and social sciences (which he thinks is a good approach), history/fiction blends (which he doesn’t). The question remains whether modern academic history adds up to anything.
Also explored are severe criticisms on the uses of history writing. Presentism and Anachronism– where you would transpose today’s values or ideas upon the past to critique a past that did not share those same values. Also history written that is really thinly veiled political commentary on the present is criticized – not that it isn’t important, but that it isn’t really history, it’s political science.
So what lessons can you take through the study of history? Ultimately, Wood would say that history is experience. More than anything else it breeds deep skepticism about man’s ability to control the future.
Ultimately, Wood’s lament is that the study of history has been fragmented, perhaps hopelessly so, in the post-modernist, post-Marxist approaches that have dominated much of the social sciences and literary criticism over the past 40 years. He lays out a compelling case that these approaches are ill suited to a full understanding of the lessons of history. They are too narrow and too dismissive of the power that the past has in shaping decision-making in the past. However, he is equally as critical of the old narrative histories, which are now more like the popular histories on bestseller lists, that preceded modern academic approaches and delves into their serious limitations (history of political, social elites, and military operations). He sees the future as a blend of the two, but this in practice is a staggeringly difficult task. These combinations so far have primarily taken the form of “micro-histories”, also the blending of history and social sciences (which he thinks is a good approach), history/fiction blends (which he doesn’t). The question remains whether modern academic history adds up to anything.
Also explored are severe criticisms on the uses of history writing. Presentism and Anachronism– where you would transpose today’s values or ideas upon the past to critique a past that did not share those same values. Also history written that is really thinly veiled political commentary on the present is criticized – not that it isn’t important, but that it isn’t really history, it’s political science.
So what lessons can you take through the study of history? Ultimately, Wood would say that history is experience. More than anything else it breeds deep skepticism about man’s ability to control the future.
August 26, 2013
Gordon S Wood is certainly among the most distinguished American historians studying the period of the Revolution and early years of the American republic. Pre-GoodReads, I read his Empire of Liberty in the Oxford History of the United States, a wonderful read and an intellectual tour de force.
This book is a reflection on the work of historians comprised of review articles appearing from 1981 to 2007, mostly in The New York Times Review of Books and in The New Republic. A fundamental thread running through these essays is "why do we study the past?" Wood's contention is that the past needs to be understood on its own terms insofar as possible and not through the lens of present concerns. The reviews chronicle the "present concerns" of the last quarter century of historiography--critiquing such trends as "influence", narrative, history as fiction, microhistory, history and political theory, postmodernism and history, race, class, gender, and multicultural concerns and history.
What I appreciate about these reviews is that they are neither a jeremiad against these trends in historiography nor an uncritical acceptance of the same. Rather, Wood welcomes the light these various approaches shed on the past and the richer understanding of the course of events that result but he firmly resists whatever he sees as distortions of the past driven by current agendas. For example, in his review of Theodore Draper's A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution he affirms the more complex power dynamics of the revolution but also contends that ideas were important. He writes:
What is permissible culturally affects what is permissible socially or politically, so that even if ideas may not be motives for behavior, as the realists and materialists like Draper tell us, the do affect and control behavior.
He contends that all Draper can explain is the war of independence, but not the American Revolution.
Wood is not only a skilled historian, he is a skilled reviewer who summarizes the careers of the authors and the content of the books, and gives us his own careful and nuanced critique. He may not always please the authors he reviews but he always treats them with respect.
This book is a reflection on the work of historians comprised of review articles appearing from 1981 to 2007, mostly in The New York Times Review of Books and in The New Republic. A fundamental thread running through these essays is "why do we study the past?" Wood's contention is that the past needs to be understood on its own terms insofar as possible and not through the lens of present concerns. The reviews chronicle the "present concerns" of the last quarter century of historiography--critiquing such trends as "influence", narrative, history as fiction, microhistory, history and political theory, postmodernism and history, race, class, gender, and multicultural concerns and history.
What I appreciate about these reviews is that they are neither a jeremiad against these trends in historiography nor an uncritical acceptance of the same. Rather, Wood welcomes the light these various approaches shed on the past and the richer understanding of the course of events that result but he firmly resists whatever he sees as distortions of the past driven by current agendas. For example, in his review of Theodore Draper's A Struggle for Power: The American Revolution he affirms the more complex power dynamics of the revolution but also contends that ideas were important. He writes:
What is permissible culturally affects what is permissible socially or politically, so that even if ideas may not be motives for behavior, as the realists and materialists like Draper tell us, the do affect and control behavior.
He contends that all Draper can explain is the war of independence, but not the American Revolution.
Wood is not only a skilled historian, he is a skilled reviewer who summarizes the careers of the authors and the content of the books, and gives us his own careful and nuanced critique. He may not always please the authors he reviews but he always treats them with respect.
July 25, 2009
This book is a collection of essays that were originally published as book reviews in various publications by Gordon Wood, a renown historian as well as critic. Each review was thoughtfully selected to illustrate a trend or new approach in the craft of history writing that has developed over the past 30 years. While for the most part, I did not agree with his assessments of the dangers of the biases that he so eloquently elucidates in each reviewed piece, I really enjoyed the intellectual analysis of the nature of history, truth, and interpretation. The incisive analysis of each technique of historiography was a great way for me to question and explore my own predispositions. Though I got the sense that Dr. Wood feels that these new ways of interpretation are not as valid as some older approaches to history, I did feel that he gave each book a balanced and fair review based on his own biases and predilections. As an added bonus, at the end of each review there appears an update on his thoughts as well as any dialogue he may have had with the author after the original review was published. This also added to my enjoyment, as I appreciated that the author could continue his thought process and sometimes clarify or revise his original opinions. Overall very worth reading as a way to step-back from the immersion of historical storytelling to examine how history is made and remade.
December 13, 2016
Those looking for a quick, sound-byte style would do well to skip The Purpose of the Past. Same for those who need to agree completely and utterly with an author in order to understand his larger points.
The Purpose of the Past is one of those books that requires patience but pays off in the end. A compilation of reviews that span several decades, this book is less about the books reviewed and more about what the reviews – and Dr. Wood’s comments on the reviews, both positive and negative – teach us about the purpose of history and why it matters.
I started reading this book several years ago and couldn’t get into it (academics criticizing other academics doesn’t make for the most enthralling reading), but I’m glad I finally picked this book back up and took the time to read it. Since finishing, I’ve been pleasantly charmed by how many of Dr. Wood’s points have infiltrated my own thinking and understanding of not just history but the academic process overall.
In an indirect way, The Purpose of the Past makes one of the strongest arguments I've seen for the folly of the current war on liberal arts. The book is a stirring reminder of why the liberal arts matter, why the humanities matter, and why we, as a culture, are remiss to not continue to push for students to major in disciplines like history and English and their brethren. Highly recommended.
The Purpose of the Past is one of those books that requires patience but pays off in the end. A compilation of reviews that span several decades, this book is less about the books reviewed and more about what the reviews – and Dr. Wood’s comments on the reviews, both positive and negative – teach us about the purpose of history and why it matters.
I started reading this book several years ago and couldn’t get into it (academics criticizing other academics doesn’t make for the most enthralling reading), but I’m glad I finally picked this book back up and took the time to read it. Since finishing, I’ve been pleasantly charmed by how many of Dr. Wood’s points have infiltrated my own thinking and understanding of not just history but the academic process overall.
In an indirect way, The Purpose of the Past makes one of the strongest arguments I've seen for the folly of the current war on liberal arts. The book is a stirring reminder of why the liberal arts matter, why the humanities matter, and why we, as a culture, are remiss to not continue to push for students to major in disciplines like history and English and their brethren. Highly recommended.
December 31, 2010
This is an excellent collection of book reviews dealing with early American history. The author believes that some close approximation of impartiality is possible when writing history (notwithstanding postmodern claims to the contrary) and that it is the job of the historian to write about the past as accurately as possible. His reviews are enjoyable because he critiques the historical accuracy - or lack thereof - of each book, while also explaining how that particular work fits into the larger trends in historical writing.
Here is his framework for analyzing all historical writing:
"To be able to see the participants of the past in this comprehensive way, to see them in the context of their own time, to describe their blindness and folly with sympathy, to recognize the extent to which they were caught up in changing circumstances over which they had little control, and to realize the degree to which they created results they never intended - to know all this about the past and to be able to relate it without anachronistic distortion to our present is what is meant by having a historical sense."
Here is his framework for analyzing all historical writing:
"To be able to see the participants of the past in this comprehensive way, to see them in the context of their own time, to describe their blindness and folly with sympathy, to recognize the extent to which they were caught up in changing circumstances over which they had little control, and to realize the degree to which they created results they never intended - to know all this about the past and to be able to relate it without anachronistic distortion to our present is what is meant by having a historical sense."
September 2, 2013
Gordon Wood has developed an interesting way to survey a wide collection of historical scholarship. This book collects 21 of Wood’s book reviews and presents them to the reader, with additional narratives from Wood (and sometimes rebuttals from the original author!)
These reviews cover a wide range of historical literature and are grouped according to the aim of the book (History as fiction, narrative history, etc).
A few things stand out after just the first few chapters. First, Wood has a very distinct way of viewing history and history writing. His reviews are far more negative than I would have expected, owning mainly to his dislike of the way authors chose to explain or theorize specific historical periods. For those writing anything in the Post-Modern historical style, watch out – Gordon Wood will most likely take you to task! Secondly, Dr. Wood enjoys American History, as reviews for those books dominate several chapters in this collection.
If you want a detailed walk-through of many aspects of both World and American History, this book is for you. I would also highly recommend the Introduction, were Wood expertly answers the question “Why write about History?”
These reviews cover a wide range of historical literature and are grouped according to the aim of the book (History as fiction, narrative history, etc).
A few things stand out after just the first few chapters. First, Wood has a very distinct way of viewing history and history writing. His reviews are far more negative than I would have expected, owning mainly to his dislike of the way authors chose to explain or theorize specific historical periods. For those writing anything in the Post-Modern historical style, watch out – Gordon Wood will most likely take you to task! Secondly, Dr. Wood enjoys American History, as reviews for those books dominate several chapters in this collection.
If you want a detailed walk-through of many aspects of both World and American History, this book is for you. I would also highly recommend the Introduction, were Wood expertly answers the question “Why write about History?”
June 4, 2009
Oddly enough, the introduction to Gordon S. Wood’s The Purpose of the Past is the highlight of the book. The work itself is a collection of reviews of various book reviews over the past few decades that illustrate Wood's assessment of what faults lie in most historians' approach to history.
The introduction is one of the most amazingly succinct and accurate portrayals of what is wrong in history as a discipline today. Somehow we as historians have become so mired in micro-specialties that while holding the promise of opening up new lines of historical inquiry instead completely strangle out the narrative from history. I have long maintained the history without its “story” is a weak and feeble field shorn of what was once it must powerful weapon of instruction.
The introduction is one of the most amazingly succinct and accurate portrayals of what is wrong in history as a discipline today. Somehow we as historians have become so mired in micro-specialties that while holding the promise of opening up new lines of historical inquiry instead completely strangle out the narrative from history. I have long maintained the history without its “story” is a weak and feeble field shorn of what was once it must powerful weapon of instruction.
January 26, 2010
This was an interesting book by Gordon Wood that analyzes the different types of historical approaches throughout the last few decades. His reviews are well written, to the point, and often fairly harsh. He is in some ways the Simon Cowell of judging his peers. His comments sometimes seem harsh and anger the historian being reviewed but I find myself agreeing with him with each review. I enjoy narrative history and well written history written by non academics. I think that history went through a period of going too far to the extreme of political agenda's, political correctness, and unobjectivity to finding a good balance following 9/11. Hopefully, this trend will continue and result in good historical reading in the future.
January 30, 2011
I'm a fan of Wood's conventional historical writing, but found this collection of essays especially interesting and rewarding. This book forced me to think about what historical writing is (and isn't) at a deeper, more critical level than I've done since earning my BA in History. This book should be mandatory reading for all History degree seekers, and would also benefit the average person who feels bombarded with false (by design or otherwise) historical references, analogies, and archetypes by politicians and media talking heads (Glenn Beck et al). And, it's a really good read to boot!
January 30, 2014
In this collection of his long reviews for The New York Review of Books and other magazines, the noted historian Gordon S. Wood gets to the heart of each book he considers. His particular gift, besides his clear prose, is setting the book in the context of the debates and fashions that have swept the history profession. He does this without burdening us with the word “historiography,” or dragging us through any of the nastiness of academic trench warfare. Wood is fair and generous; he’s not afraid to criticize his peers or to praise them, and he is a pleasure to read.
March 1, 2016
It is interesting. I would have gleaned more from it if I had a larger vocabulary. Yet there is always something to learn from such a book. I like liked the way Gordon Wood critiqued the authors of historical books, bringing out the fact that even the well-educated can err in the way they interpret historical facts. It is sad to think how people can twist a truth, or say that, because there is no tangible evidence in their hands, they do not believe what they read or hear. It would be a good book to hear again.
August 4, 2011
It was interesting. More than just reviews on books, the author and historian himself, discusses how we look at history and the different ways it is portrayed. I love the Liberty Valance quote, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." It is so true to what many people believe happened in the past. We think of events and people in todays terms when it is kind of unfair for them. I learned that Sourjorna Truth was a maid in a crazy cult house, that was the most interesting book review.
February 21, 2017
A collection of review-essays of various histories of Revolutionary-era America, written from the 1970s to the 2000s.
As an audiobook, it's competently narrated, but the actual value probably comes more from having a physical copy you can refer to before or after reading the books reviewed within. I'm going to give the physical copy 3 stars.
As an audiobook, it's competently narrated, but the actual value probably comes more from having a physical copy you can refer to before or after reading the books reviewed within. I'm going to give the physical copy 3 stars.
Want to read
September 8, 2009"Much of the book concentrates on 'presentism', wherein historians and others attempt to use the past for purposes of the present and in the process occasionally distort the past in serious ways." -- Washington Post Book World, 8 Dec 08, "Best of 2008"
October 20, 2009
A well-chosen collection of Wood's reviews published over the past two decades. Through his choices, Wood summarizes recent historigraphical debates. A great summary for a history Ph.d student preparing for oral exams.
May 24, 2011
Wood uses the occasion of the book review to expound on the various ways that history can be used and abused (frequently the latter). Thus book is methodologically rich but carries along with elegant and highly readable prose.
January 23, 2017
I found this collection of book reviews to be absolutely wonderful! It is amazing to witness the depths of Wood's knowledge. I found his interaction with philosophical trends (from the 1970's - 2000's) and historiography to be very insightful.
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