From lagging book sales and shrinking job prospects to concerns over the discipline's "narrowness," myriad factors have been cited by historians as evidence that their profession is in decline in America. Ian Tyrrell's Historians in Public shows that this perceived threat to history is recurrent, exaggerated, and often misunderstood. In fact, history has adapted to and influenced the American public more than people--and often historians--realize. Tyrrell's elegant history of the practice of American history traces debates, beginning shortly after the profession's emergence in American academia, about history's role in school curricula. He also examines the use of historians in and by the government and whether historians should utilize mass media such as film and radio to influence the general public. As Historians in Public shows, the utility of history is a distinctive theme throughout the history of the discipline, as is the attempt to be responsive to public issues among pressure groups. A superb examination of the practice of American history since the turn of the century, Historians in Public uncovers the often tangled ways history-makers make history-both as artisans and as actors.
Ian Tyrrell is professor in the School of History at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He is the author of five previous books, including Sobering Up: From Temperance to Prohibition in Antebellum America.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Prologue: Finding History in a Queue Part 1 - The Broken Mirror 1. What's Wrong with History? The Contemporary Context 2. The Great Jeremiad: The History of Historical Specialization Part 2 - Historians and the Masses, 1890-1960 3. Searching for the General Reader: Professional Historians, Amateurs, and Nonacademic Audiences, 1890-1939 4. The Crusade against Pedantry and Its Aftermath: Allan Nevins and Friends, 1930s-1950s 5. Movies Made History and History Made Movies 6. Radio Days: How the American Historical Association Sought to Meet a Mass Culture Part 3 - The Problem of the Schools 7. Contesting the Retreat from the Schools: Progressives and Teachers before World War II 8. The Patriots' Call: American History and the School Curriculum in War and Peace Part 4 - Public Histories 9. Going Public: Public and Applied History, 1890-1930 10. History Making in the New Deal State 11. States of War: World War II, the Cold War, and Remaking History 12. The State, the Local, and the National: Connecting and Disconnecting with Public Audiences Epilogue: The Forgotten: From the Fifties to the New Left and Beyond Notes Index
