Popular history
Encyclopedia
Popular history is a broad and somewhat ill-defined genre
of historiography
that takes a popular approach, aims at a wide readership, and usually emphasizes narrative
, personality
and vivid detail over scholarly analysis. The term is used in contradistinction to professional academic or scholarly history writing which is usually more specialized and technical and, thus, less accessible to the general reader.
Some popular historians are without academic affiliation while others are academics, or former academics, that have (according to one writer) “become somehow abstracted from the academic arena, becoming cultural commentators”.
Popular historians may become nationally renowned or best-selling authors and may or may not serve the interests of particular political viewpoints in their roles as “public historians”. Many authors of “official histories” and “authorized biographies” would qualify as popular historians serving the interests of particular institutions or public figures.
Recent examples of American popular historians with academic affiliations include Stephen Ambrose
, Doris Kearns Goodwin
and Pauline Maier
. Non-academics include Bruce Catton
, Shelby Foote
and Barbara Tuchman
.
Recent examples of British popular historians include Niall Ferguson
, Christopher Hibbert
and Simon Schama
and – from a previous generation – E.P. Thompson, A.J.P. Taylor, and Christopher Hill
.
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
of historiography
Historiography
Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...
that takes a popular approach, aims at a wide readership, and usually emphasizes narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
, personality
Personality type
Personality type refers to the psychological classification of different types of individuals. Personality types are sometimes distinguished from personality traits, with the latter embodying a smaller grouping of behavioral tendencies. Types are sometimes said to involve qualitative differences...
and vivid detail over scholarly analysis. The term is used in contradistinction to professional academic or scholarly history writing which is usually more specialized and technical and, thus, less accessible to the general reader.
Some popular historians are without academic affiliation while others are academics, or former academics, that have (according to one writer) “become somehow abstracted from the academic arena, becoming cultural commentators”.
Popular historians may become nationally renowned or best-selling authors and may or may not serve the interests of particular political viewpoints in their roles as “public historians”. Many authors of “official histories” and “authorized biographies” would qualify as popular historians serving the interests of particular institutions or public figures.
Recent examples of American popular historians with academic affiliations include Stephen Ambrose
Stephen Ambrose
Stephen Edward Ambrose was an American historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a long time professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many best selling volumes of American popular history...
, Doris Kearns Goodwin
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Doris Kearns Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American biographer and historian, and an oft-seen political commentator. She is the author of biographies of several U.S...
and Pauline Maier
Pauline Maier
Pauline Maier is a popular scholar of the American Revolution, the preceding era and post-revolutionary United States. She is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of American History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ....
. Non-academics include Bruce Catton
Bruce Catton
Charles Bruce Catton was an American historian and journalist, best known for his books on the American Civil War. Known as a narrative historian, Catton specialized in popular histories that emphasized colorful characters and historical vignettes, in addition to the basic facts, dates, and analyses...
, Shelby Foote
Shelby Foote
Shelby Dade Foote, Jr. was an American historian and novelist who wrote The Civil War: A Narrative, a massive, three-volume history of the war. With geographic and cultural roots in the Mississippi Delta, Foote's life and writing paralleled the radical shift from the agrarian planter system of the...
and Barbara Tuchman
Barbara Tuchman
Barbara Wertheim Tuchman was an American historian and author. She became known for her best-selling book The Guns of August, a history of the prelude to and first month of World War I, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1963....
.
Recent examples of British popular historians include Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson
Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson is a British historian. His specialty is financial and economic history, particularly hyperinflation and the bond markets, as well as the history of colonialism.....
, Christopher Hibbert
Christopher Hibbert
Christopher Hibbert, MC, FRSL, FRGS was an English writer, historian and biographer. He has been called "a pearl of biographers" and "probably the most widely-read popular historian of our time and undoubtedly one of the most prolific"...
and Simon Schama
Simon Schama
Simon Michael Schama, CBE is a British historian and art historian. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University. He is best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC documentary series A History of Britain...
and – from a previous generation – E.P. Thompson, A.J.P. Taylor, and Christopher Hill
Christopher Hill (historian)
John Edward Christopher Hill , usually known simply as Christopher Hill, was an English Marxist historian and author of textbooks....
.
See also
- People's historyPeople's historyA people's history or history from below is a type of historical narrative which attempts to account for historical events from the perspective of common people rather than political and other leaders.-Description:...
- Official historyOfficial historyAn official history is a work of history which is sponsored, authorised, or endorsed by its subject. The term is most commonly used for histories which are produced at a government's behest....
- Academic historyAcademic historyAn academic history can mean a large, multivolume work such as the Cambridge Modern History, written collaboratively under some central editorial control....
- Narrative historyNarrative historyNarrative history is the practice of writing history in a story-based form. It can be divided into two subgenres: the traditional narrative and the modern narrative....
- Whig historyWhig historyWhig history is the approach to historiography which presents the past as an inevitable progression towards ever greater liberty and enlightenment, culminating in modern forms of liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy. In general, Whig historians stress the rise of constitutional government,...