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Truth in history

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  • Author: Handlin, Oscar
    Date:
    Created
    1998
    ,
    Copyrighted
    1979
    Summary:

    Truth in history teaches how to read, how to analyze, how to discriminate. It is as helpful to the reader whose history is created daily in the news as it is to the professional historian whose field is in a crisis of disarray. Oscar Handlin instructs his readers in the fundamentals of his field. He tells us how to deal with evidence, how to discern patterns amid flux, how to situate ourselves in history, and how to recognize where fact shades subtly into opinion. As he pursues broad definitions of history and its uses, he also attends to specific subjects, showing how they bear directly on each other and on his concerns.

    Contents:
    • Preface: The abuses of history
    • PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON A CALLING: A discipline in crisis
    • Living in a valley
    • THE CENTRAL THEMES OF AMERICAN HISTORY: A history of American history
    • Theories of historical interpretation
    • Historical criticism
    • An instance of criticism
    • DEALING WITH THE EVIDENCE: How to read a word
    • How to count a number
    • Seeing and hearing
    • History in a world of knowledge
    • PERSISTENT THEMES AND HARD FACTS: Political theory and popular thought
    • Man and magic
    • Good guys and bad
    • The two-party system
    • THE USES OF HISTORY: The diet of a ravenous public
    • Ethnicity and the new history
    • The uses of history
    • Acknowledgments.
    Original Publisher: Transaction Pub.
    Language(s): English