Barbara Tuchman (037)

Best known for her popular history of the outbreak of World War I, The Guns of August, Tuchman collected her thoughts on writing history into a single volume, Practicing History, in 1981. As someone with an unusual perspective, a writer primarily of popular history, this is an interesting and under-used account of the historian's task. In this episode I argue it is one we should pay more attention to.

00:00 Introduction
00:29 Popular history
02:44 Primary sources
05:20 Writing as an art
07:54 Systems and the end of history
11:00 Misogyny, gender, and Tuchman
12:54 A reading

[joelthorne]

Interesting. Thanks. For someone like myself interesting in the study of history, is chronological order the best method? For example, studying ancient Near Eastern history, followed by Greek and Roman history and onto European history?

[NathanWHill]

i wonder what you would think about _To the Finland Station_ by Edmund Wilson. A work of popular history explicitly about (among other things) the writing of history.

[isabelfernandezdecastillej]

Would be the comments as negative about Tuchman is she had be a male historias? I just wonder. Thank you for the very insightful lecture!

[Corvinuswargaming]

The claims that Tuchman faced opposition as a non-academic woman author also ring a bit hollow given that she came from a fairly prominent family as I am sure you are aware. Personally I do not find her work compelling even as popular history but that is a matter of taste. I found A Distant Mirror to be poor reading.