mapache2426
Member
Both Niall and Fukuyama are "popular" historians because they're unfortunately substandard professional ones
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The historical thread about the history of histography
- Thread starter mapache2426
- Start date
How do you define "professional" historians?
I've never heard Fukuyama described as a historian. He's an IR guy... and pretty well regarded in the field.
mapache2426
Member
I would define it by whether their "intellectual product" is directed towards an academic audience and subjected to peer review vs publishing for commercial consumption.
mapache2426
Member
Point well taken. I suppose he's an honorary historian by courtesy of writing an entire book about the end of history.
Yeah... no.
It's not a history book, and unless you've read it, there's a strong likelihood that you'll misunderstand his thesis.
Academic historians, for the most part, are clowns. They focused in graduate school on un-serious, niche subjects, then pushed them into the curriculum of universities. Peer review has become a politically motivated farce. I don't agree with Ferguson on everything when it comes to national security (he's an economic historian), but at least he's making an argument about a serious subject.
mapache2426
Member
It treads heavily on historical turf and he went on to write The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution and Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Present Day which are explicitly historicalYeah... no.
mapache2426
Member
I agree that universities and academia have become wholly captive to the post-modernist cult and are now both fairly useless. But professionalism should still be the standard which in my modest opinion requires the detachment of the university system vs the sensationalist incentives in commercial publishing. Ferguson himself is creating a new university in Austin.
OK, so answer Wink's question.
mapache2426
Member
The answer remains the same - publishing directed towards other academics and peer review vs a broad commercial audience. This is really just about a commitment to the "truth" vs the incentive to make sensational claims to garner attention and sales. That's why veritas is emblazoned on Harvard and "The truth will set you free" is all over American universities. Every American should be upset about being deprived of an essential institution (universities) due to the take-over of a dogmatic cult.
Can you give an example of such a historical book, or article, published within the last five years?
The answer I expected, and largely disagree with. There is absolutely no guarantee that everything coming from an academic institution or that is even peer reviewed is worth a damn. It certainly isn't as likely as in the pages of a general interest periodical or a daily newspaper, but academics, and their institutions have been severely compromised, as you admit. The internet and competition for content has corrupted the academy like everything else in America. Historians who 20 years ago would have consider it their life's work to make a single well received presentation in front of 200 peers at a conference desire more. Today you need a mega phone and your CV is not complete without a popular publication.
I do not have a problem with popular publications by historians. It certainly does not make them less "professional". What good is a new take on Mary Queen of Scots or Anne Boleyn if you can only hear about it in Dr Retha Warnike's classroom? She wrote books on those subjects to educate and challenge the thinking of people who would never sit in her class or attend an academic conference. There are thousands of real historians writing for public consumption who are no less historians then academics in ivory towers. Anymore, because of stifling influences found increasingly in academic institutions, historians writing for public consumption outside of universities are more likely to buck conventional wisdom, be more creative and even more honest.
mapache2426
Member
Read this dissertation recently, published 2016.
Off my bookshelf at random is a perfect example: Wolfgang Benz: A Concise History of the Third Reich
Solid and tight professional scholarship, interestingly will not be found in stock at any Barnes & Noble, which will instead have 5,000 copies of Sapiens.
OK…tell us your education level. Where did you get your training?
PS…Benz’s work on the Third Reich has significant structural issues and is readily available at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble…you shouldn’t try so hard to be a snob. It looks bad.
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