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Using the ability of the individual to take action as a working
measure of the extent of liberty at any time, Oscar Handlin and
Mary Handlin identify and describe numerous factors that have had
an important effect on American freedom since colonial days. In
defining the broad dimensions of the conception, they investigate,
among other subjects, the significance of the idea that the state
derived power from the consent of the governed, the early concept
of the Commonwealth, the later one of police powers, the roles
played by governmental institutions, churches, secret lodges,
voluntary associations of all kinds, immigration, the professions,
continuing social and physical mobility, and the growth of wealth.
Like scholars in other fields, historians have long occupied
themselves in self-justification. In a society which calibrates all
measures by a single standard, the proof of scientific worth became
relevance, which in turn was interpreted as a search not for truth
but for political correctness. In a blistering professional
critique of this tendency in academic scholarship, perhaps the
first of its kind, Oscar Handlin offers an analysis that, if
anything, has grown more pertinent over the past decade. In
seventeen chapters, written with the brilliant assurance of a
master craftsman, Handlin shows why the turn to partisanship and
meaning has undermined the calling of historical research. As his
new introduction makes clear, partisanship has taken the best and
brightest from the field into different callings. Both widely
heralded upon its initial appearance as well as attacked with
vigor, Truth in History emanates from a half-century's experience
of reading, writing, teaching, researching, and publishing in
history and related disciplines. The passage of time has only
confirmed the concerns of Handlin and the accuracy of his
predictions for the field. This book will be valuable for
sociologists, economists, political scientists, and historians. It
is a must read for those who contemplate a life of scholarship in
liberal arts.
This book is a methodological primer on how historians gather
evidence, presume reliability of witnesses, and develop forms of
verification in the conduct of analysis and research. It is an
introduction to the study of history and an examination of specific
instances in which ideology has distorted the study of American
history. Oscar Handlin is best known as America's leading historian
of ethnicity and the immigrant experience in the new nation. When
it was first published in 1961, The Distortion of America was
perhaps the first critique of anti-Americanism as an ideological
expression of Marxism-Leninism in schools of higher learning. For
the second edition, originally published in the 1990s, Handlin
added chapters on forces affecting economic strength in the US;
race and distortions of America; Yugoslavian troubles created by
class divisions; and the relevance to China of democracy in the
United States. The final chapter is a memorable essay on how Arthur
Koestler's career exemplifies the difficulties of the ex-communist
in an unsympathetic environment. Now available in paperback for the
first time, this volume offers a new generation of historians and
students an opportunity to acquaint themselves with one of the
premier historians of the twentieth century.
Like scholars in other fields, historians have long occupied
themselves in self-justification. In a society which calibrates all
measures by a single standard, the proof of scientific worth became
relevance, which in turn was interpreted as a search not for truth
but for political correctness. In a blistering professional
critique of this tendency in academic scholarship, perhaps the
first of its kind, Oscar Handlin offers an analysis that, if
anything, has grown more pertinent over the past decade.
In seventeen chapters, written with the brilliant assurance of a
master craftsman, Handlin shows why the turn to partisanship and
meaning has undermined the calling of historical research. As his
new introduction makes clear, partisanship has taken the best and
brightest from the field into different callings. Both widely
heralded upon its initial appearance as well as attacked with
vigor, Truth in History emanates from a half-century's experience
of reading, writing, teaching, researching, and publishing in
history and related disciplines. The passage of time has only
confirmed the concerns of Handlin and the accuracy of his
predictions for the field. This book will be valuable for
sociologists, economists, political scientists, and historians. It
is a must read for those who contemplate a life of scholarship in
liberal arts.
Awarded the 1952 Pulitzer Prize in history, "The Uprooted"
chronicles the common experiences of the millions of European
immigrants who came to America in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries--their fears, their hopes, their expectations.
The "New Yorker" called it "strong stuff, handled in a masterly and
quite moving way," while the "New York Times "suggested that ""The
Uprooted" is history with a difference--the difference being its
concerns with hearts and souls no less than an event."
The book inspired a generation of research in the history of
American immigration, but because it emphasizes the depressing
conditions faced by immigrants, focuses almost entirely on European
peasants, and does not claim to provide a definitive answer to the
causes of American immigration, its great value as a
well-researched and readable description of the emotional
experiences of immigrants, and its ability to evoke the time and
place of America at the turn of a century, have sometimes been
overlooked. Recognized today as a foundational text in immigration
studies, this edition contains a new preface by the author.
Rarely is it possible to hear the voice of the people in a
revolution except as it filters through the writings of articulate
individuals who may not really be representative. But on several
occasions during the effort to draft a constitution for
Massachusetts after 1776, the citizens of the Commonwealth were
asked to convene in their 300 town meetings to debate and convey to
the legislators their political theories, needs, and aspirations.
This book presents the transcribed debates and the replies returned
to Boston which constitute a unique body of material documenting
the political thought of the ordinary citizen. In an important,
extended introduction, the editors, interpreting the American
Revolution and its sustaining political framework in light of this
material, analyze the forces that were singular and those that were
universal in the shaping of American democracy. Comparisons are
made with popular uprisings in other parts of the world and at
other times, and the whole is integrated into a general discussion
of the nature of revolution and its relationship to constitutional
authority.
This book examines the troubled era that transformed the United
States after 1920, emphasizing the conditions of life of ordinary
men and women and the structures of their society, not the theories
of either liberty or equality elaborated by thoughtful scholars.
The Uprooted is a rare book, combining powerful feeling and
long-time study to give us the shape and the feel of the immigrant
experience rather than just the facts. It elucidates the hopes and
the yearnings of the immigrants that propelled them out of their
native environments to chance the hazards of the New World. It
traces the profound imprint they made upon this world and how they,
in turn, were changed by it.
This happy combination of literary essay and exceptionally
well-written history, providing insights into a past still
important in the twentieth century, will quickly take an honored
place on the shelves of Harvardiana. Bernard Bailyn writes on the
origins of Harvard and the foundations of Harvard's persistent
character, structure, and style of governance, and contributes
another chapter on the unhappy ending to the administration of the
beloved President Kirkland (x8xo-i8z8), who presided over but could
not control a period of profound change. Oscar Handlin describes
the shifting relationships and power struggles among faculty,
administration, and students over the years (Making Men of the
Boys) and Harvard's evolution from an ingrown community of teachers
and students into a large, complex institution with worldwide
prestige. Donald Fleming has chapters on the presidency of Charles
William Eliot (the greatest man in the history of Harvard) and the
colorful personalities of Harvard (not only Copey and Santayana and
Charles Eliot Norton, but also Old Sophy, who kept a pet chicken in
his room in Holworthy). Stephan Thernstrom examines the growing
diversity of the student body as to finances, geography, religion,
and racial background from the eighteenth century to the 1980s. The
subjects are of continuing interest not only to members of the
Harvard community, who will treasure this memento of Harvard's
350th anniversary, but also to historians of higher education and
ordinary readers, who will enjoy the new information, original
personalities, and thoughtful perspectives the book offers.
From Acadians to Zoroastrians-Asians, American Indians, East
Indians, West Indians, Europeans, Latin Americans, Afro-Americans,
and Mexican Americans-the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic
Groups provides the first comprehensive and systematic review of
the many peoples of this country. It should excite all Americans
about their nation. Informative and entertaining, this volume is an
indispensable reference work for home, library and office. It
establishes a foundation for the burgeoning field of ethnic
studies; it will satisfy and stimulate the popular interest in
ancestry and heritage. It is a guide to the history, culture, and
distinctive characteristics of the more than 100 ethnic groups who
live in the United States. Each ethnic group is described in
detail. The origins, history and present situation of the familiar
as well as the virtually unknown are presented succinctly and
objectively. Not only the immigrants and refugees who came
voluntarily but also those already in the New World when the first
Europeans arrived, those whose ancestors came involuntarily as
slaves, and those who became part of the American population as a
result of conquest or purchase and subsequent annexation figure in
these pages. The English and the Estonians, the Germans and the
Gypsies, the Swedes and the Serbs are interestingly juxtaposed.
Even entries about relatively well-known groups offer new material
and fresh interpretations. The articles on less well-known groups
are the product of intensive research in primary sources; many
provide the first scholarly discussion to appear in English. One
hundred and twenty American and European contributors have been
involved in this effort, writing either on individual groups or on
broad themes relating to many. The group entries are at the heart
of the book, but it contains, in addition, a series of thematic
essays that illuminate the key facets of ethnicity. Some of these
are comparative; some philosophical; some historical; others focus
on current policy issues or relate ethnicity to major subjects such
as education, religion, and literature. American identity and
Americanization, immigration policy and experience, and prejudice
and discrimination in U.S. history are discussed at length. Several
essays probe the complex interplay between assimilation and
pluralism-perhaps the central theme in American history-and the
complications of race and religion. Numerous cross-references and
brief identifications will aid the reader with unfamiliar terms and
alternative group names. Eighty-seven maps, especially
commissioned, show where different groups have originated.
Annotated bibliographies contain suggestions for further reading
and research. Appendix I, on methods of estimating the size of
groups, leads the reader through a maze of conflicting statistics.
Appendix II reproduces, in facsimile, hard-to-locate census and
immigration materials, beginning with the first published report on
the nativities of the population in 1850.
Commonwealth, when first published in 1947, was a pioneer effort to
investigate the historical role of government in the American
economy. It revealed for the first time the importance of political
action in the development of the American free enterprise system.
The present edition has been revised by the authors to take into
account the research of the past two decades. Focusing on
Massachusetts as a key state, Oscar and Mary Flug Handlin describe
the changes in the ways the government dealt with the economy from
the period of independence to the Civil War, and they analyze the
social groups whose interests and ideas influenced the character of
those changes. The Handlins have re-examined both their original
conclusions and the procedures by which they arrived at their
formulation of the problem. They have not found it necessary to
make substantial textual revisions, for both their research methods
and their conclusions have stood the test of time, and their basic
concepts have already been incorporated into the literature.
However, they have made stylistic changes and have drastically
altered their documentation, rigorously pruning the old footnotes
and incorporating into the new notes important recent books and
articles which treat the political and economic history of the
period and the local history of the stale. There are two
significant additions to the book: a new preface and a new appendix
that explain the theoretical framework through a description and
demonstration of the change in the authors' attitude and focus
during the course of their original research. This revision of
Commonwealth is as cogent as the original edition, more useful to
scholars because of its incorporation of the latest scholarly
literature, and, as a result of the reduction in documentation,
more attractive to the general reader.
Oscar and Lilian Handlin show us how the new voyagers in the
twentieth century--from Asia, Africa, Australia, and Latin
America--record their experiences in the United States. The
narratives of the non-Europeans, they find, clearly reflect the
circumstances of their composition, as well as the political
prejudices of their authors. These literary products have earned
far less attention than those of the English, French, Germans, and
Russians, and this volume proposes to redress the balance.
The earliest of the thirty-one travel accounts was written by
Rabindranath Tagore in 1924, and the most recent by V. S. Naipaul
in 1989. Many accounts are newly translated from Arabic, Persian,
Hebrew, and Spanish. Some authors are well known, but the less
famous are equally insightful. Some insights are weighty, many are
amusing. Octavio Paz, a sympathetic observer who admired his
country's neighbor, was uneasy that the most powerful country in
the world sustained "a global ideology...as outdated as the
doctrine of free enterprise, the steam boat, and other relics of
the nineteenth century." The Israeli journalist Hanoch Bartov
observed that "God conceived the car first, with man an
afterthought, created for the car's use (a Southern California
legend)." In coming to a truer understanding of the United States,
these writers noted the frightening repercussions of unsettled
lives, perceived class differentiation, contentions regarding the
status of women, the sense of national unity amid diversity, and
countless other issues of concern to those who try to find meaning
in the contemporary world.
As fresh in 1991 as when it first published a half-century ago,
"Boston's Immigrants" illuminates the history of a particular city
and an important phase of the American experience. Focusing on the
life of people from the perspective of the social historian, the
book explores a wide range of subjects: peasants society and the
cause of European migration, population growth and industrial
development, the ideology of progress and Catholic thought, and
urban politics and the dynamic of prejudice. A generation of
students and scholars has profited from its insights, and general
readers have enjoyed its lively style. A new preface by the author
reflects upon the book's intellectual origins.
One of the most eminent historians of our time offers here a
perceptive guide to the study of history. "Truth in History"
teaches how to read, how to analyze, how to discriminate. It is as
helpful to the reader whose history is created daily in the news as
it is to the professional historian whose field is in a crisis of
disarray.
A Pulitzer Prize winner and mentor for more than a generation of
American historians, Oscar Handlin instructs his readers in the
fundamentals of his field. He tells us how to deal with evidence,
how to discern patterns amid flux, how to situate ourselves in
history, and how to recognize where fact shades subtly into
opinion. He combines a historian's knowledge with a
historiographer's breadth and a philosopher's temperament. He is
concerned with a historian's limitations and with the ways one can
operate honestly within those limitations. He brings a full
appreciation of the past to his evaluation of what is modern. And
while carefully examining recent developments in his discipline, he
culls genuine achievements from the trends that confuse originality
with true worth.
Handlin everywhere enlivens his discussion with brilliant
details. As he pursues broad definitions of history and its uses,
he also attends to specific subjects, showing how they bear
directly on each other and on his concerns. He deals with Populism,
capitalism, laissez faire, the two-party system, the New History,
ethnicity, and roots, treating all with the flair of an
accomplished man of letters. Only a scholar of Handlin's experience
and expertise could have brought such a wealth of particular facts
to an issue of such general importance--truth in history.
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