Publishers Weekly
02/10/2020
Harvard University professor emeritus Bailyn (The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution) highlights “small, strange, obscure, but illuminating documents or individuals” he encountered while researching other, larger projects in this hodgepodge of a book. Successful chapters, including the close reading of a will left by a Puritan merchant and an overview of changing interpretations of 17th-century census records, showcase the creativity inherent in the study of history and the conversational nature of scholarship, illustrating Bailyn’s belief that “the historical imagination must be closely bounded by the documentation.” Unfortunately, no effort is made to connect the individual documents and historical figures (which also include an index of colonial newspapers and the religious sect leader who inspired Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus) to each other, and as the book progresses, the law of diminishing returns sets in. One chapter catalogues topics discussed at a series of seminars on Atlantic history; the book’s epilogue consists largely of extended excerpts from previous publications. Though readers may glimpse the masterly scholarship and clear writing that distinguish Bailyn’s work, the book’s inconsistency and lack of an overarching thesis lead to a disappointing result. History buffs will be left hoping for a more substantial account of Bailyn’s life and career. (Apr.)
Boston Globe - Julia M. Klein
"The most striking takeaway is how much may depend on the random discovery of a single document—how one clue, backed by other evidence, can turn longstanding interpretations on their head."
Law & Liberty - George H. Nash
"Using the chapters in this… book as lamps and signposts, Bailyn has created an elegant roadmap of his intellectual journey."
Peter H. Wood
"Bernard Bailyn balances rigor and imagination in studying the past. Now a reflective memoir allows new generations to converse with a master humanist."
New York Times - Renwick McLean and Jennifer Schuessler
"In 2020, [Bernard Bailyn] published Illuminating History: A Retrospective of Seven Decades, an intellectual self-portrait that eschews conventional memoir in favor of a series of essays exploring some ‘small, strange, obscure documents and individuals’ that had captured his imagination. In an epilogue, he cautioned, as he often did, against imposing our own sense of certainty on the confusion of the past as it was actually experienced by those who lived it.
‘The fact—the inescapable fact—is that we know how it all came out,’ he wrote, ‘and they did not.’"
Jack Rakove
"Bernard Bailyn reveals the sources of his own creativity as the greatest historian of colonial and revolutionary America."
New York Journal of Books - Roger I. Abrams
"Bailyn has mined the archives. In Illuminating History he explains how he found the golden nuggets and used them over seven decades of scholarship.… At this stage of his remarkable career, Bernard Bailyn has written a book to guide the historians who will write the next Pulitzer Prize works in the field."
Gordon S. Wood
"[Bailyn] transformed the field of early American history as much as any single person could."
Stanley N. Katz
"In this revealing and deeply personal volume, Bernard Bailyn gives a moving and characteristically literate account of historical sensibility in the second half of the twentieth century."
Richard D. Brown
"Bernard Bailyn’s stature rests on imaginative analysis, brilliant insights, and superb, finely honed craftsmanship. All these, and his gift for understanding people,…shine in Illuminating History."
Mary Beth Norton
"In this unusual memoir, Bernard Bailyn reflects on the way his life and historical work have been entwined. The result is creative, compelling, and captivating."
Peter Onuf
"Illuminating History casts fresh light on a brilliant career. Bernard Bailyn emerges from its pages as a great historian at the peak of his powers."
Library Journal
01/31/2020
Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Bailyn's (Adams Univ. Professor, Harvard; The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution) work is both a retrospective of, and introduction to, his decades-long historical investigations and writings on early American history. With a deft but almost self-deprecating touch, the author begins with his pre-World War II youth and education. Bailyn gives deference to influential teachers and professors, while remembering his human and humorous interactions with these early mentors. Over the next several chapters, Bailyn shifts to his life as a scholar, recounting his research into different eras and topics in American history, focusing on the mining of original source material to explore the attitudes of Americans just prior to the Revolution, and, later, 17th and 18th century population studies and controversies. Bailyn's mastery of his varied subjects is impressive, but sometimes esoteric. At the end of his career, Bailyn hosted a series of seminars on Atlantic history, bringing together young historians from a myriad universities and backgrounds. The seminars served as a thought-provoking platform for many aspiring historians. VERDICT This blend of autobiography and history will be of interest to both seasoned scholars and those just entering the field.—John Muller, Dist. of Columbia P.L.
Kirkus Reviews
2019-12-01
An eminent historian reveals inspirations and serendipitous discoveries.
Bailyn (Emeritus, History/Harvard Univ.; Sometimes an Art: Nine Essays on History, 2015, etc.), who has won the Pulitzer Prize (twice), the National Book Award, the Bancroft Prize, and the National Humanities Medal, offers a fascinating reflection on intellectual enthusiasms and challenges that have marked his long, prolific career. In 1946, after serving in the Army, the author began graduate school with an interest in Colonial America, aiming to examine connections between America and Europe and particularly "the connections between ideas and ‘reality' " in the daily lives of ordinary individuals and families. Deftly melding memoir and historiography, Bailyn recounts several significant projects that were shaped by unexpected findings, "one or more obscure documents or individuals that in themselves, in some peculiar way, illuminated the greater picture." His quest to examine the effect of the Puritans' religious beliefs on early New England's economy, for example, was advanced by a 48,000-word last will and testament of "an avaricious but profoundly pious tradesman" who candidly reviewed the events of his life in the context of his "self-denying but aspirational" conception of religion. In investigating family life among the early settlers, Bailyn confronted feisty controversies among scholars, fueled by contrasting analyses of demographic data, genealogies, land transfer documents, and family histories. The American Revolution occupied the author for decades, leading him to ask how widely and deeply the Founders' ideology penetrated daily life. Researching that question, he discovered an astounding archive of 3,280 pages of newspapers annotated and indexed by a Boston shopkeeper: a rare response to the turmoil of the times. "The search for interior experiences—for sudden, unexpected signs" can never be systematic, Bailyn observes, but they inform a constant revision of the sense of the past. History, he writes, "is an imaginative construction," like fiction, but bound by documentation. The historian must be an agile storyteller, always relying on evidence. "You can't disprove a novel," he writes, "but you can disprove history; and that seems to me all the difference in the world."
A privilege for history buffs from a master of the craft.
