Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America

Popularizing the Past tells the stories of five postwar historians who changed the way ordinary Americans thought about their nation’s history.   What’s 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 historians—Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, John Hope Franklin, Howard Zinn, and Gerda Lerner—who, 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 Witham’s book makes clear, before we can properly understand the heated controversies about American history so prominent in today’s political culture, we must first understand the postwar effort to popularize the past.

Table of Contents:
Introduction What’s the Matter with History? The Problem of Popularity in Postwar American Historical Writing Part I Popular History and General Readers 1 Richard Hofstadter: Popular History and the Contradictions of Consensus 2 Daniel Boorstin: Popular History between Liberalism and Conservatism Part II: Popular History and Activist Readers 3 John Hope Franklin: The Racial Politics of Popular History 4 Howard Zinn: Popular History as Controversy 5 Gerda Lerner: The Struggle for a Popular Women’s History Conclusion The Legacies of Postwar Popular History Acknowledgments Archival Abbreviations  Notes Index

About the Author :
Nick Witham is associate professor of United States history and head of the department at the Institute of the Americas at University College London. He is the author of The Cultural Left and the Reagan Era: US Protest and Central American Revolution.

Review :
"Astute, informative, and skillfully researched, Witham’s thought-provoking analysis will appeal to historians (and aspiring historians) who want a better grasp on the challenges and opportunities of history as a profession and the business of popular-history books." "In his new book Popularizing the Past, historian Nick Witham sheds light on five particularly interesting historians’ writing and publishing strategies during the mid-to-late twentieth century . . . Witham’s readings of these five figures offer sensitive analysis and point to the key questions about politics and publishing." "I am very taken with Nick Witham’s illuminating book and hope that all practicing and aspiring US historians read it. Drawing on careful research and writing in sparkling prose that rivals his subjects', Witham examines how five prominent postwar historians navigated the challenges and rewards of scripting national narratives for audiences beyond the academy. For anyone interested in crafting intellectually robust, readable, and relevant scholarship, Popularizing the Past is essential reading."     "A fascinating exploration of American historians searching for their publics and seeking to balance empirical depth and literary flair, scholarship and fame, objectivity and activism. Nick Witham's book is the most probing examination of these matters that I have read. Essential for understanding the importance and perils of writing popular history." "Those dispirited by today's skirmishes over the American past should seek out Nick Witham’s wonderful book on postwar history writing. His portrait of prominent scholars who wrote for the public offers a fresh take on popularization, presentism, and politicization—even as it underscores the essential work of histories that educate and engross readers."   "The argument of Witham’s book is that the audience for popular historical nonfiction that explains America to itself has always been a diverse one, made up of various types of readers. The imagined past, when an idealised American reader relaxed by the fireside with a sturdy tome written by a credentialed academic, is, largely speaking, a fiction…The best parts of Popularizing the Past are the archival discoveries of letters from readers, and between editors and writers, showing the nitty-gritty of how this sausage got made – and eaten." "[An] engaging, instructive account of the efforts by five postwar American academic historians – and, importantly, their editors and publishers – to reach a broader, non-scholarly audience with their work . . . . If historians wish to produce work that resonates with ordinary readers while being taken seriously by fellow specialists, it can be done. And for guidance on how to do it they could do worse than look to those who, three-quarters of a century ago, set about ‘popularizing the past.'"   "Readers interested in the relationship between 'scholarly' and 'popular' history, as well as the practical and political uses to which historical understanding has been put, will find Popularizing the Past a worthwhile read. It usefully demonstrates that historians have engaged audiences both within and beyond academia in meaningful conversations about the nation’s past." "Popularizing the Past draws from a rich archive: in addition to providing insightful analyses of the works themselves, Witham examines his subjects’ collected papers, their correspondence with peers and readers, and—most significantly—records of the publication process: back-and-forth with editors over titles and scope, or suggestions for marketing. . . . Of particular note is Witham’s analytical attention to this readership: both real and imagined. He traces the different ways popular history circulated. . . . But Witham also interrogates the mythic 'general reader' as imagined by publishers and by these authors themselves—and how this conception changed over time."