Tag: Historical writing

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What in the World Is World History?

If you are  anywhere close to my age, you probably took a college course called “World History” even though it was primarily about Europe. Today some students take courses in “World History” that are actually designed to cover the world. This reflects a genuine effort by historians to “go global.” However, it is not as easy—nor perhaps as valuable—as it seems.

The field of world history got its start in the 1960s, perhaps with William McNeill’s book The Rise of the West (a powerful book I wrote about here). [1] In spite of the name,  his book was an effort to get beyond thinking about Europe and offshoots like the United States. In fact, McNeill viewed world history as starting with the Middle East civilizations of the Sumerians and Egyptians and dramatically changed by the Mongols, who moved south and west of the Asian steppes in the 1200s. Only after 1500 did Europe begin to dominate.

Last semester I took a graduate seminar in “Thinking about World History in the Early Modern Era.” As the name implies, the class was a creative effort to determine how, on the college level, to study the whole world in a single period, the early modern period (usually described as between 1500 and 1800). Each student had to devise a syllabus for teaching such a course. (In a previous post I discussed the difficulties of breaking up history into meaningful periods, but this post is about trying to encompass the world in one of those periods. )

I don’t have a problem with teaching world history during the early modern period. I do have a problem with the entire concept of world history as it has been developed over the past few decades. Many barrels of ink (a metaphor, of course) have been spent on trying to define the discipline.

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Sacred Gifts, Profane Pressures

For years I’ve heard about the academic pressure to publish. Now, as a graduate student, I’ve come across some results of that pressure. These are books that make an interesting subject dull.[1] I’ll consider one of them in this post.

To be sure, my professors have taken pains to assign only books they consider important and relevant, the “cream of the crop.” (A professor advised his class that if we didn’t like these, we would hate the ones he had rejected.) Nevertheless, a few clunkers come through. Well, I consider them clunkers. As an editor (current and past), I am frustrated when I see tremendous talent combined with disappointing execution.

The book I’m commenting on was praised on its cover as “superior and fascinating.” It reflects enormous research (12 years’ worth), including meticulous gathering of visual artifacts across two continents and several centuries. And it exhibits heroic efforts to come up with new interpretations. But, in my view, its impact is restricted by having to meet the academic goals that lead to tenure and full professorship.

Marcy Norton’s Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World[2] is the story of how tobacco and chocolate, substances that were part of pre-Columbian social and religious rituals in Mexico and Central America, became popular products in Europe during the 1600s.

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The American Story

Wouldn’t it be rewarding to sit back and read a comprehensive history of the United States written by a historian who has thought long and carefully about how America became what it is? Someone who could guide you through its triumphs and tragedies and show how they are linked? Surely the time spent would be worth as much as hours devoted to the latest biography by David McCullough or Ron Chernow: it would give you a sense of the full story.

Now you can do just that. Wilfred M. McClay has written Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.[1] It’s meant to be used as a textbook in homes, private schools, and charter schools—places where the dictates of public textbook commissions and education-school ideologies don’t hold sway. But it’s also written for “readers, young and old.”

The Wall Street Journal has described Land of Hope as a “counterpoint” to A People’s History. That popular history by the late Howard Zinn recounts the story of the United States as a country in which power dominates over the oppressed. Zinn wanted to tell the story of the victims—the Arawak Indians in Hispaniola, for example, rather than Columbus, the European intruder who “discovered” them.

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Word Problems

Let me begin by saying that word errors (typos, grammar mistakes, misspellings) can happen to anyone. As an editor, I am still embarrassed by some of mine, including a few on this blog. I once thought I would lose my job at Business Week when I wrote an inaccurate caption (I didn’t). And then there was, “The mountain peaked through the clouds.”

That said,  ever since I began studying history, I have noticed proofreading errors, more than in my past reading. I’m not talking about esoteric archival footnotes, just normal words.

After being bothered by this for awhile, I started making a list. For example, I read “shielings,” not “shirelings,” “Homan’s” not “Homans,’” “few woman,” not “few women,” “countries,” not “counties,” “sixty” not “sixth,” “Repreinted,” not “Reprinted,” “pampleteer,” not “pamphleteer,” Athansian, not Athanasian, Michael Berklin, not Michael Berlin, and “within and outwith” (unless that is a British expression  I’m unfamiliar with).

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Learning to Write, Again

Although I have been a professional writer for more than fifty years, I still have some things to learn about academic writing. Here are five lessons I’ve picked up so far:

  1. Don’t use bullets or make lists (like this one). A professor told me that explicitly, and once I began to read more journal articles, I saw the rule at work. Bullets are a useful tool in, say, policy papers, although they are undoubtedly overused in the Internet era (with automatic bulleting). Why aren’t they right for academia? Maybe they make things look too simple. Ideas and facts need to be interwoven in history; trying to separate them into single phrases may oversimplify. Or it may just be a matter of style.
  2. Don’t use short paragraphs. I discovered this on my own. My journalistic three- or four-sentence paragraphs just don’t fly. Again, I don’t exactly know the reason. But combining paragraphs in my papers has given them (and me) a more serious image; very good for a future academic. And topic sentences help.
  3. The first paragraph, especially, should be long. Forget about the Wall Street Journal’s “anecdotal lede” (yes, that’s the way editors spell it), which was invented to attract the reader’s attention. Don’t use Business Week’s “back when, but now” lede, which creates in a few sentences the story’s context for a busy reader.  By the way, quotations to enliven the piece are also on the edge of propriety. Be serious. Continue reading “Learning to Write, Again”