I remember things like this about a Very Credentialed Historian:
Lepore notes that a one-volume US history has to skip a great deal,
but there should be a logic to what is in and what is out. If there is
one in this book, I’m not sure what it is. Mentioning the story of Harry
Washington, a slave who escaped from George Washington’s plantations
adds richness to the history, but Lepore returns to him several times.
His index entry is only a bit shorter than that of the Whig party, and
that includes the mistaken reference to Milliard Fillmore as the Whig
(as opposed to Know Nothing) candidate in 1856. So much is missing from
the book that it would be irresponsible to assign it as a text in any
class. It omits any mention of the Jay Treaty and skips over the role
played by Booker T. Washington in race debates, which is quite
surprising unless you consider how his life’s work might complicate her
narrative. The first Gulf War appears in the context of a discussion of
the evolution of the news business.
Even though I won’t ever assign it, I am, however, tempted to select a
few passages and use them as an extra-credit question for my students
at Cal State, San Bernardino: “The following are passages from the work
of a major prize winning historian. Spot the mistakes.” My students, after all, do need to learn not to be blinded by credentials.
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