I’ve seen you a while back at the Columbus CWRT and bought one of your books and enjoyed it, although I’m more into political history. I think anyone who is interested at all in the 1860-1870 period must be familiar with the war and what the soldiers went through. There can be no plausible dicotomy between military history and other history. As for the “amateur” business, I agree with what you’ve said here and I can understand how you feel.
The scary thing about not having the credentials is getting published. The peer-review process used by university presses is a very valuable tool for the author. But when they want to know up front “who” you are, and you don’t have the right initials after your name, you’re sunk before you can begin. If you go to a trade publisher, from what I hear, the manuscript doesn’t get a real vetting. A conscientious author wants to know how to improve his work. If he’s been reading everything on his subject and can demonstrate his writing ability, he ought to have a chance to have his work exposed to subject specialists. Or am I worried for nothing?
OK, it’s obvious that I have a manuscript in the works, and I don’t have a degree in history. I have a master’s in another discipline. With all the work I’m putting into it, I feel the need for someone knowledgeable to tell me what’s wrong with it. I’m concerned that an “amateur’s” work cannot speak for itself at a university press if none will even look at it. Are there knowledgeable editors in trade publishing houses that can find experts in the political history of the CW-Reconstruction era to read a manuscript, or is this only a university press kind of thing?
]]>Maybe we should use the term scholarly rather than academic to denote historians who do the research, write well, and have an interpretation. To further confuse things, some academics write popular histories, or at least, non-academic works. Witness Gordon Wood’s short book of a few years back on the American Revolution, or Mark Grimsley’s battlefield guides of Shiloh and Gettysburg. What is more problematic for me is the so-called “popular” historian. As Greenberg states in his SLATE piece, “many people see the dilemma as simply a matter of professors versus journalists, or professionals versus amateurs. But that dichotomy isn’t very useful. There are academic historians with Ph.D.s, such as the late Stephen Ambrose, who write best sellers and blanket the media but command little scholarly respect.”
What is more problematic for me is the so-called “popular” historian. My opinion is that this type of writer (yes, writer, not really a researcher at all) culls material from many secondary works, throws in a letter or two he or she found in an anthology, and tells a story that has been told many times before and gives us nothing new. I write many book reviews for academic journals, and at times they ask me to review a “popular” title if it is about something the journal deals with. It does not take long to figure out if the bookis scholarly, or if it is a popular title designed to go right into B&N or an historic site’s bookstore/giftshop. I have noticed a trend as well in publishing popular histories that make me very gunshy about buying/reading a titles. If on the cover the subtitle says “the remarkable true story of…” or “the untold story of…” it almost always HAS been told before, and the new book adds zero to the body of knowledge.
OK–I have probably gone in circles here, but I do recommend Greenberg’s article at SLATE. ]]>
t have a Ph.D, good. There are lots of people, people whose ancestors fought in the war that I write about, who do.
Michael]]>No thanks! And, if a small group pf narrow-minded, degree-obsessed people don’t want to buy my books because I don’t have a Ph.D, good. There are lots of people, people whose ancestors fought in the war that I write about, who do.
Michael
]]>