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Popular Historians Still Can Be Great

Reader comment on item: Historians Run Amok

Submitted by Dave (United States), Apr 5, 2017 at 07:19

I really love a good history book. I gobble up contemporary authors like Hampton Sides, David McCullough and Nathaniel Philbrick. Whenever there's a favorable review by one of those or other authors in the Times I get the book on my Kindle. My all time favorite was David McCullough's history of the Wright brothers, although the one on the Brooklyn Bridge was amazing.
I don't pay much attention to what's going on in academia, or care. But the marketplace comes through when it comes to supporting some excellent pickings for us curious hoi polloi.

By the way, I recall that a friend of mine's Dad went to Harvard years ago, along with John F. Kennedy, and wrote some major project for his history major on teacup imagery in the Victorian era. I guess trivial history has only expanded since then. But that's what you get when the normal rules of supply and demand are absent in the often irrelevant halls of hackademia.

Submitting....

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Daniel Pipes replies:

Excellent point. Popular history - which professional historians sniff at as commercial - takes up good topics and treats them in a compelling way. Long live the market!

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Reader comments (12) on this item

Title Commenter Date Thread
momentous academic decline [17 words]darlene casellaApr 9, 2018 12:05242715
It's Not Only History [203 words]
w/response from Daniel Pipes
TomApr 9, 2017 18:24238361
Come to Murdoch Uni in Western Australia [50 words]Peter McMullanApr 6, 2017 06:31238225
1This Article Resonated [199 words]BruceApr 5, 2017 10:15238183
Popular Historians Still Can Be Great [162 words]
w/response from Daniel Pipes
DaveApr 5, 2017 07:19238181
why I didn't study history [206 words]rwApr 4, 2017 21:26238166
It si worse than that [89 words]
w/response from Daniel Pipes
George ZilbergeldApr 4, 2017 21:01238165
Horrible History [22 words]
w/response from Daniel Pipes
ANN FARMERApr 4, 2017 17:08238157
Couldn't agree more [175 words]Ron ThompsonApr 4, 2017 16:52238155
Publish or perish may be behind the Microcosmographia [30 words]ETApr 4, 2017 14:49238154
Perhaps it has something to do with the younger generation trying to get faculty jobs [16 words]ETApr 4, 2017 14:43238153
1Qui Bono [375 words]Douglas Schulek-MillerApr 4, 2017 14:32238152

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