The Windowless Room of the Present: Rereading David Harlan

Abstract This essay unearths the guiding question of David Harlan’s 1997 book, The Degradation of American History. While most commentators have focused their attention on Harlan’s biting criticism of the historical profession, this essay argues that Harlan’s diatribe against historical scholarship pursued “for its own sake” stems from a deep concern about the moral education of citizens in an age that François Hartog and others typify as “presentist.” Although Harlan’s remedies against presentism are found wanting, the essay argues that the question raised in The Degradation of American History is a relevant, timely, and still unresolved one, now even more than at the time of the book’s original publication.

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Technology, Political Economy, and Professionalization: Central Themes of the Organizational Synthesis

The Business History Review ◽

10.2307/3114810 ◽

1983 ◽

Vol 57 (4) ◽

pp. 471-493 ◽

Cited By ~ 77

Author(s):

Louis Galambos

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Political Economy ◽

Organizational Behavior ◽

American History ◽

Moral Judgments ◽

Business History ◽

Historical Scholarship ◽

Rich Diversity ◽

The Social ◽

Previous Scholarship

In this suggestive essay, Professor Galambos surveys the large number of books and articles, published since 1970, that together point toward a new “organizational synthesis” in American history. Expanding upon an earlier, more tentative essay on the same subject published in the Autumn 1970 issue of the Business History Review, he contrasts the widely disparate postures adopted in recent years by historians studying organizational behavior. His survey reveals a rich diversity of opinion, less reliant than was previous scholarship upon abstractions drawn from the social sciences. This diversity of opinion, Galambos concludes, provides the organizational synthesis with much of its continued vitality, and makes possible “the kind of moral judgments that have always characterized the best historical scholarship.”

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Fidel's Child: A Half-Century Doing Latin American History

The Americas A Quarterly Review of Latin American History ◽

10.1017/s0003161500000675 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 68 (01) ◽

pp. 1-6

Author(s):

Richard Graham

Keyword(s):

Latin American ◽

American History ◽

Laptop Computer ◽

Half Century ◽

Latin American History ◽

Historical Profession

By no fault of my own I have lived long enough to see many changes in the historical profession, and it may be useful today at this luncheon to look backward a bit over the last half-century and see where we have been. My first thought was that we have moved from carbon copies on onionskin paper and no Xerox machines to the laptop computer. Our writing has not necessarily improved. And mine has not even gotten faster, perhaps because rewriting has become seductively easy. But changes in how we do history and who does history dwarf the importance of such technologies.

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The Historian and the Indian: Racial Bias in American History

The Americas A Quarterly Review of Latin American History ◽

10.2307/979504 ◽

1963 ◽

Vol 19 (4) ◽

pp. 349-362 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jack D. Forbes

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

American Indian ◽

United States Of America ◽

American History ◽

Racial Bias ◽

United States History ◽

The United States ◽

Historical Past ◽

States History ◽

Historical Profession

The student of history who is concerned with the historical past of the American Indian and who is also a reader of general American historical works is faced with a provocative problem which apparently does not seriously bother other members of the historical profession. That is, he is aware of the question of defining what is meant by the concepts of “United States history “and “American history.” Most historically minded people would solve the problem very simply: American history is the story of America’s past (meaning by “American “the United States of America only) or, Unįted States history is the story of the development of the United States as a nation and as a region.

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Fidel's Child: A Half-Century Doing Latin American History

The Americas A Quarterly Review of Latin American History ◽

10.1353/tam.2011.0091 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 68 (1) ◽

pp. 1-6

Author(s):

Richard Graham

Keyword(s):

Latin American ◽

American History ◽

Laptop Computer ◽

Half Century ◽

Latin American History ◽

Historical Profession

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“An acrid odor of the 1920s is again in the air”: The Strange Career of American Nativism and the Ongoing Relevance of John Higham's Strangers in the Land

The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era ◽

10.1017/s1537781412000060 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 258-262

Author(s):

Maddalena Marinari

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Intellectual History ◽

American History ◽

The United States ◽

The State ◽

First Century ◽

Social Concern ◽

Historical Scholarship ◽

American Society ◽

Ebb And Flow

The influence of John Higham and Strangers in the Land on the fields of immigration, ethnic, social, and intellectual history remains unquestionable. Nativism is as relevant to the study of American history in the twenty-first century as it was in 1955, when the book first appeared. Strangers in the Land has endured as an inspiring work of scholarship not only for its substance, but also for the author's commitment “to join historical scholarship with contemporary social concern.” Although he became interested in and wrote about many other subjects after the publication of Strangers in the Land, Higham continued to be concerned about the ebb and flow of nativism in the United States throughout his life. As Michael Kammen pointed out, Higham “remained exceedingly serious about the state of the nation and American society, sometimes verging upon gloom if not despair.” This sense of urgency about the pervasiveness of history in the present emerged in his prologue to the 2002 edition of his book, when he wrote that he feared there was “an acrid odor of the 1920s.” Fifty-five years after its publication, Strangers in the Land still conveyed the importance of its subject and inspired readers to seek an answer to Higham's fear of a resurgence of nativism.

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