Imagined Histories

American Historians Interpret the Past

Anthony Molho, Gordon S. Wood, Anthony Molho, Gordon S. Wood, Anthony Molho, Gordon Wood

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780691058115
  9780691058108
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691187341
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historiography
• Index: History

This collection of essays by twenty-one distinguished American historians reflects on a peculiarly American way of imagining the past. At a time when history-writing has changed dramatically, the authors discuss the birth and evolution of historiography in this country, from its origins in the late nineteenth century through its present, more cosmopolitan character.


In the book's first part, concerning recent historiography, are chapters on exceptionalism, gender, economic history, social theory, race, and immigration and multiculturalism. Authors are Daniel Rodgers, Linda Kerber, Naomi Lamoreaux, Dorothy Ross, Thomas Holt, and Philip Gleason. The three American centuries are discussed in the second part, with chapters by Gordon Wood, George Fredrickson, and James Patterson. The third part is a chronological survey of non-American histories, including that of Western civilization, ancient history, the middle ages, early modern and modern Europe, Russia, and Asia. Contributors are Eugen Weber, Richard Saller, Gabrielle Spiegel, Anthony Molho, Philip Benedict, Richard Kagan, Keith Baker, Joseph Zizak, Volker Berghahn, Charles Maier, Martin Malia, and Carol Gluck.


Together, these scholars reveal the unique perspective American historians have brought to the past of their own nation as well as that of the world. Formerly writing from a conviction that America had a singular destiny, American historians have gradually come to share viewpoints of historians in other countries about which they write. The result is the virtual disappearance of what was a distinctive American voice. That voice is the subject of this book.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1 Exceptionalism
• CHAPTER 2 Gender
• CHAPTER 3 Economic History and the Cliometric Revolution
• CHAPTER 4 The New and Newer Histories: Social Theory and Historiography in an American Key
• CHAPTER 5 Explaining Racism in American History
• CHAPTER 6 Crèvecoeur's Question: Historical Writing on Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity
• CHAPTER 7 The Relevance and Irrelevance of American Colonial History
• CHAPTER 8 Nineteenth-Century American History
• CHAPTER 9 Americans and the Writing of Twentieth-Century United States History
• CHAPTER 10 Western Civilization
• CHAPTER 11 American Classical Historiography
• CHAPTER 12 In the Mirrors Eye: The Writing of Medieval History in America
• CHAPTER 13 The Italian Renaissance, Made in the USA
• CHAPTER 14 Between Whig Traditions and New Histories: American Historical Writing about Reformation and Early Modern Europe
• CHAPTER 15 Pre scotts Paradigm: American Historical Scholarship and the Decline of Spain
• CHAPTER 16 The American Historiography of the French Revolution
• CHAPTER 17 Modern Europe in American Historical Writing
• CHAPTER 18 Clio in Tauris: American Historiography on Russia
• CHAPTER 19 House of Mirrors: American History-Writing on Japan
• LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
• INDEX