Interpreting American History I-II. [antikvár]

History is made up of facts, but also of opinions; it is not only, asLeopold von Ranke put it, "what actually happened/' but also what peoplewho know what happened think about past events. Facts are often difficultto track down and verify, but once located they are immutable and per-manently available. Opinions are easily formed, but are as evanescent asice in August. Of course, historical opinions are based on facts if theyare any good at all, and although nearly all of them are subject eventuallyto modification if not outright rejection, those that retain their plausibilitylongest are those developed in minds steeped in knowledge of the past.Good historians have always possessed a high degree of intelligence andimagination (essential elements for the formation of sound opinions), butthey have also been masters of enormous amounts of factual informationcollected over years of patient study. This is what raises their consideredopinions to the level of what are called interpretationscomplex attemptsto order many facts in such a way as to form consistent and thus per-suasive explanations of some segment of the past.This book is principally concerned with historical interpretations. Itrepresents my attempt to find out what twenty-nine important specialiststhink about American history. The historians I have talked with mentionthousands of facts, but employ them primarily to explain and justify theiropinions, that is, to interpret history. The result makes up a history ofthe United States from its colonial beginnings to the present, but this isnot the volume to turn to to learn the terms of the charter of the LondonCompany of Virginia, the Sherman Antitrust Act, or the Yalta agreement,although these facts are discussed in its pages. It is, rather, a search forthe meaning of American history to our own day.All of these historians are productive scholars and thus their interpreta-tions of their subjects of special interest are readily available. But by thevery character of historical writing their published ideas appear in contextsdetermined by themselves and in response chiefly to their own concernsand judgments. Since historical interpretations tend to raise as manyquestions as they answer, the published works of these men have oftenled other historians to new opinions of their own, and these, in turn, have va