I have an MA in history and one year toward a doctorate in history, although I work in Information Technology. As I told my dad once, one benefit of an advanced degree is that you’re not overly impressed with advanced degrees.

Some of the best historians of the Civil War have been non-academics: Bruce Catton and Glen Tucker (reporters), Shelby Foote (novelist), and Kenneth P. Williams (mathematician). A PhD in history is good, but it’s not essential. Intellectual curiosity and an open mind are more important, in my opinion.

I left graduate school in 1974. Since then I have thought and learned a great deal about the nature of history by reading and also by listening to interviews with writers on forums such as C-SPAN’s Book TV and especially Book Notes.

One thing I have noticed about historians who are not academically trained is that they are sometimes unaware of what other historians have written on a subject. They sometimes think their conclusions are brand new, when in fact they are repeating interpretations that were once in vogue.

An example is Thomas Fleming’s book on American entry into World War 1, where he claims that our participation was a big mistake. He seems to be unaware that this interpretation was the general wisdom in the 1920s and 1930s. Of course, this doesn’t invalidate Fleming’s conclusions, but they’re not so revolutionary either.

I did take a fair number of history courses (both undergrad and graduate) and never felt like I was given a “formalized approach” on how to research and write. I did have the opportunity to learn when my research and writing was bad (I wrote a weepy paper on the Soviet annexation of Latvia based only on Latvian sources – ooops!) The one advantage to my undergraduate coursework is that no one else saw the comments about how bad it was. The graduate courses I took, however, exposed my work to my classmates. I was working in a nuclear physics lab at the time and one comment I got was “for a physicist, you write great history”. How unfortunate that I’m not actually a physicist….

I would think that the training provided in law school may actually better prepare one for writing history as it tends to force you to evaluate your witnesses, prepare to argue both sides of an issue and write extensively.

Keep in mind that, for a lawyer, you’re not a bad physicist…. errr, I meant historian.

Humbly submitted,
Dave

Thanks for your kind words. You are, of course, correct about there being no such thing as bad publicity in the sense that anything that focuses attention and sells books is a good thing. However, there is such a thing as bad publicity if you write a bad book and it gets crucified as a result.

And thanks for reading.

Eric

I have noted that especially in the US great value is adhered to a (university) degree to claim expertise. In my country it’s not uncommon for university graduates in law studies end up as history teachers -even on university level.

I would consider the fact that your book gained so much publicity as a great compliment. There’s a very nice (but rude) Dutch expression for it, but I will translate it for now as ‘there is no bad publicity’.