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Gordon S. Wood: Chastises writers who use history to advance an agenda

... In "The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History," Mr. Wood critiques and analyzes many of the important books of the past 25 years, with a special emphasis on works about the Revolutionary era. It is a collection of his review essays from publications such as the New Republic and the New York Review of Books.

His thoughts on the views expressed in the books he is reviewing are insightful and rigorously argued. Fortunately, his writings lack the stridency of some modern scholarship. Many readers will be just as interested in his views of the best ways to approach to writing about and analyzing the past.

Mr. Wood, a professor at Brown University, is especially hostile towards historians who use their work either to make a political statement about today or use modern-day values when evaluating the past. Although he is generally classified as a conservative and is clearly a strong foe of political correctness, that does not prevent him from criticizing those on the right who don't practice historical analysis as he sees fit.

He rightly criticizes John Patrick Diggins, a liberal-turned-conservative, for use of history not to enlighten readers about the past but instead to advance a philosophy.

"Since Diggins is not really a historian, he does not have a historian's feel for the complexity, the nuances, the contexts, and the differentness of the past. He thinks of history as a social scientist might think of it: as a source for generalizations about human behavior that transcend time and place," Mr. Wood writes of Mr. Diggins' 2000 book "On Hallowed Ground: Abraham Lincoln and the Foundations of American History."

He is equally hard on liberal scholars such as James MacGregor Burns, whom he describes as "a political activist for whom writing history is really politics by other means.''...

Read entire article at Washington Times