February 26
On the Teaching and Writing of History, Bernard Bailyn (1994)

I'm skipping past the second book I finished this year, since for that one I have oodles of notes, some of which are still on scraps of paper scattered across my desk.

This third one isn't much of a book, more like a transcript of an interview session with Professor Bailyn. I think I finished it in only a few sittings. Bernard Bailyn is a historian of some renown who specializes in American history around the time of the Revolution and shortly before. Several of his works are on my long list to read some day. I saw his name on this thin little volume at some sort of sale (maybe the library surplus sale, or maybe a garage sale). Like most books I buy, it was priced at a heavy discount, so I went ahead and got it for 50 cents or so.

As the title suggests, the discussion is largely about the business of being a professional historian. That may sound dull to a non-historian, but Bailyn's is a lively mind, which hops about from topic to topic, so the interview is peppered with intriguing little ideas about history and its practice. For example, speaking of the textiles available to seventeenth century colonists, he wonders: Did clothing itch? It seems like it ought to be relevant, but it's never mentioned in the sources. Maybe the people were so used to it they never thought to discuss it in their writings which survived.

Another point I remember was brought to mind this afternoon as Ericka and I were driving home together (from a wedding-related errand). She made reference to how in some small towns and rural areas there are individuals who are happy to spend their entire lives in their one tiny community never venturing away from it. That reminded of an example Bailyn gave, when asked whether highly technical micro-studies are really significant to history at large:

My short file of notes on this short book remind me of three things: One is that I liked Bailyn's characterization of history as neither an art nor a science but a craft. Another is encountering the word prosopography, which was completely unfamiliar to me. I'm still not sure I can say I learned the word. Merriam Webster tells me that a prosopography is "a study that identifies and relates a group of persons or characters within a particular historical or literary context", but I confess that definition leaves me feeling no more enlightened about the term.

The third was my bemusement when I encountered three familiar names in short succession. Zoë Oldenbourg was cited as a writer of historical fiction whom Bailyn admires. He was referring to her novel, The World Is Not Enough; I thought of her biography of Catherine the Great, which at that time was high on my list of books to review here. (In Bailyn's book, the first name is spelled with the umlaut, as I showed it above. On Ms Oldenbourg's book it is displayed as "Zoé", which I suppose is the French spelling.)

Five paragraphs later Bailyn refers to Samuel Eliot Morison as "the greatest American narrative historian since Parkman". That struck me as a funny coincidence, considering that just the day before at a garage sale I had picked up Francis Parkman's Oregon Trail and one of Morison's numerous volumes. (I'm not sure which one, but I didn't recognize it as one I already have.) Neither book was a burning desire of mine, but they were dirt cheap, so I took them. (It's not that big a coincidence, given that Parkman and Morison are among the prolific writers of American history, but still it amused me.)

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