![]() At one point Tuchman pooh-poohs the proposition (of E. But there are internal contradictions nonetheless-cracks in this let-the-facts-speak facade. "Primarily I think of the historian as a storyteller"-utilizing only primary sources, always supplying corroborative detail, featuring public figures ("with power to affect destiny"), arriving "at theory by way of the evidence": all this in distinction, variously, to "the way of the Ph.D.," the "professional historian," the theorist. Seven of the eight pieces on craft turn out, moreover, to be arguments for Tuchman's kind of history-writing (the eighth is a graceful bow to research libraries). ![]() In sum, a Tuchman retrospective, 1936-1980. The first section consists of discussions of craft the second chiefly of occasional pieces and book reviews the third of timely views-responses, mainly, to Vietnam and Watergate. ![]() ![]() These selected essays are not, then, contributions to the advancement of knowledge-with two possible exceptions. The title is apt: Tuchman does indeed practice history as a lawyer practices law, or a doctor medicine that is, she applies it-to the writing of involving narratives, to the drawing of contemporary judgments. ![]()
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