John Lewis Gaddis' The Landscape of History: Part 2

As promised, here is the review of John Lewis Gaddis' The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past. Gaddis' work is on historiography, and so fair warning to those who are looking for a brief pleasure read on how historians do what they do: this is the nuts and bolts of historical work. It is not for the faint of heart.

That being said, Gaddis makes the book entertaining, lacing it with gentle humor and references to other subjects, including literature (the first chapter contains a running metaphor to Virginia Woolf's first novel Orlando, and a later chapter contains a quote from Tolstoy's seminal work War and Peace, not to mention the blink-and-you'll-miss-it Douglas Adams reference - all of which make the English major in me very happy) and paleontology. The writing style is fluid and casual, a professor chatting with a student about the hows and whys of the craft. Because it is a series of lectures that have been taken and turned into essays, Gaddis is able to preserve the conversational tone, and it works very well with the topics that he addresses, preventing them from becoming completely and utterly boring (which, in the hands of another author, could have been the case).

Gaddis does spend quite a bit of time (from about the fourth chapter onwards) mocking the social sciences in a not-so-gentle manner that does not quite fit with his tone in the rest of the essays. He also throws in a few quips against theories that he does not agree with which, if you are not familiar with them (and I'm not - but I'm sure I will become quite familiar with them in the future), you are likely to miss or simply pass over.

Overall, I enjoyed The Landscape of History, but I am glad that I was reading it for class, and not on my own, as pleasure reading. Having the class discussion and writing assignments to structure my reading definitely helped with understanding what to look for in Gaddis' text, which, while conversational, could be difficult to follow at times.

Now on to the next book on my reading list - ironically enough, Orlando.

John Lewis Gaddis' The Landscape of History: Part One

As you probably saw in a previous post, I have been reading John Lewis Gaddis' work on historiography, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past. This particular post will deal with the first four chapters.

One of the topics that Gaddis brings up is time travel and whether it would make someone a better historian. He points out its use in literature, citing Michael Crichton's Timeline and Connie Willis' Doomsday Book as examples of graduate students jumping back in time for their thesis work.

Michael Crichton's time traveling novel Timeline

Gaddis' main point when it comes to time travel, however, is that, despite it being extremely exciting to see all of these wonderful places and people within their context, "the direct experience of events isn't necessarily the best path toward understanding them, because your field of vision extends no further than your own immediate senses" (4). In other words, going back in time to study the French Revolution, for example, is a bad idea because, since the time traveler will be too busy avoiding Madame la Guillotine, mobs of angry Parisians, and other horrible events on the ground to truly experience the wide affect of events.

I disagree with Gaddis, here, however. Gaddis' statement seems to cover every single type of historical study. But what if you are a historian interested in the social impact of an event? Time travel would be a perfect medium for someone to understand what it was like to live, breath, and survive in times as turbulent as the French Revolution, the War of the Roses, or the Hundred Years War. Imagine what it would be like, as a social historian, to discover what the people of England really thought about the Yorks and the Lancasters - or whether they even cared who was on the throne, so long as there was a king. 

Time travel gives more of a chance for a historian to learn about the things that don't find their ways into the textbooks. Stepping into a time machine, a historian can learn about the social structure at Versailles, not simply by reading about it, but by experiencing it for himself. And he can choose when he wants to go to - the beginning of Versailles' strict etiquette under Louis XIV, or its final lapse under Louis XVI. The possibilities for studying social strata are endless.

Because Gaddis' statement is an all-encompassing denial of the benefits of time travel, I cannot help but disagree with him. There are definitely benefits to traveling through time for a social historian, as it allows for the discovery of information that is left out of many documents, simply because it was irrelevant or so commonplace that it was uninteresting to the chroniclers of the era. By traveling through time, historians would discover new things about a time and its people, and maybe even completely change their perspectives and attitudes towards the cultures they study. 

Reading The Landscape of History: Or, Why I Really Like Prose that Flows Well

I'm reading The Landscape of History by John Lewis Gaddis for my history class (future blog posts on this to follow), and I can't help but notice how well Gaddis transitions between huge important historical topics and clever anecdotes and witticisms, which is a trait that I really appreciate in authors (a good example from Gaddis' book is when he opens Chapter Four by talking about how he kept associating the term "teasing out" with hairdressing - which is an amazing analogy, and absolutely hilarious in context).

Which set me to thinking - what is it that I really like about this book? What does it have in common with other non-fiction works that I have enjoyed in the past?

And the answer that I came up with, in my musings, was this: I like prose that flows well.

This may be a trait of being an English major as well, but I enjoy books where the author writes his/her prose as if it is a novel. Some of these works are more successful than others. All of them, however, allow the reader to get into the mind of the people of the time, whether it be through a third person omniscient narrator, or through a semi-narrative, semi-informative method of storytelling. This is a (very limited) list of the ones that I really liked:

Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates - David Cordingly
I'm pretty sure that this book reads so well because of the fantastic nature of piracy in general, and the fact that this book focuses mainly on the Golden Age of Piracy (think Blackbeard, Morgan, and Calico Jack) makes it even more fascinating.

Manhunt: The 12 Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer - James L. Swanson
This thing reads like a murder mystery and adventure novel. Swanson's narrative never really lags, and the tension constantly builds. I also learned so much about Lincoln, Booth, and the assassination that I didn't read anything that wasn't associated with the main figures for months.

The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine - Benjamin Wallace
I am unashamedly fond of our third president, and this book deals with him, albeit in a round-about manner: it focuses on one of the greatest scandals in the wine world, that of the Jefferson Wine Bottles. Rumored to be the oldest bottles of wine in existence, their existence was questioned by everyone from the highest of wine critics to the staff of Monticello. But they also fooled the greatest of minds. It's a really entertaining read, going into the story of wine and white-collar crime - and, of course, Thomas Jefferson's sojourn in Paris.

Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34 - Bryan Burroughs
This book is amazing - fast-paced, well-researched, and insanely fascinating. It covers all of the major criminals of the day - Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, and John Dillinger - in intricate detail, all while contrasting them with the FBI agents who chased them and, in many situations, gunned them down.

One Summer: America, 1927 - Bill Bryson
Honestly, just any of Bill Bryson's books. Because all of them are hilarious. And the ones that I've read - this one, At Home, Shakespeare, and Notes from a Small Island (not technically about history, but with lots of very interesting historical content thrown in at random intervals) are very witty looks at the world.

I'm looking forward to seeing where Gaddis goes with Landscape of History!