Popularizing the Past

Popularizing the Past tells the stories of five postwar historians who changed the way ordinary Americans thought about their nations history. Whats the matter with history? For decades, critics of the discipline have argued that the historical profession is dominated by scholars unable, or perhaps even unwilling, to write for the public. In Popularizing the Past, Nick Witham challenges this interpretation by telling the stories of five historiansRichard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, John Hope Franklin, Howard Zinn, and Gerda Lernerwho, in the decades after World War II, published widely read books of national history. Witham compellingly argues that we should understand historians efforts to engage with the reading public as a vital part of their postwar identity and mission. He shows how the lives and writings of these five authors were fundamentally shaped by their desire to write histories that captivated both scholars and the elusive general reader. He also reveals how these authors efforts could not have succeeded without a publishing industry and a reading public hungry to engage with the cutting-edge ideas then emerging from American universities. As Withams book makes clear, before we can properly understand the heated controversies about American history so prominent in todays political culture, we must first understand the postwar effort to popularize the past.