Historiography and Public History

Historians in Public: The Practice of American History, 1890-1970

Ian Tyrell, 2005

It was probably a mistake to read this book immediately after Peter Novick. It’s a much dryer study, with much less personal detail. Tyrell focused mainly on the official life of the American Historical Association (AHA), which made this book much less interesting for me. But a few things did stick out, like the “rapid rise of agricultural history, with the formation of the Agricultural History Society under AHA auspices in 1919 and a specialized journal in 1927.” Tyrell connected the advancing fortunes of agricultural history with a Progressive interest in country life, which seems reasonable, but probably bears repeating just because it is so obvious.

Another area Tyrell called attention to, that I should look deeper into, was the influence of book clubs on American readers. By the late 1920s, he said there were nine major American book clubs, led by the Book-of-the-Month Club (est. 1926) and the Literary Guild (1927), “serving over 100,000 readers each by the 1930s.” Tyrell also mentioned the History Book Club -- it might be interesting to look at its history and the books it promoted over the years.

He also mentioned: American Heritage, ed. Bruce Catton, Henry Pringle, and Mark Sullivan, whose multi-volume Our Times was said by Allan Nevins to have “probably done more to interest people in American history than anything else written in our generation.” Marquis James won the 1937 Pulitzer for a study of Andrew Jackson (I should review award lists, too), and Harpers editor Frederick Allen wrote Only Yesterday. Carl Sandburg wrote extensively on Lincoln, and newspaperman Walter Millis wrote Road to War: America, 1914-1917. Then of course, there’s Claude Bowen. Popular history has its downside, too.

Yale professor Allen Johnson said “there is little point in writing history that will not be read.” He edited the fifty-volume Chronicles of America series, which Publishers Weekly claimed sold “tens of thousands” in the 1920s by “intensive subscription sale.” Tyrell also said Charles and Mary Beards’ Rise of American Civilization (1927) and America in Midpassage (1939) “served a generation as textbooks in colleges and high schools.” I wonder how long the use of the Beards’ texts in schools continued, after they began to lose their preeminence in professional circles?