sjahangir
The discussion of the tree rings of the old diseased hemlock…
The discussion of the tree rings of the old diseased hemlock DEMONSTRATES, DISPLAYS, ILLUSTRATES, SHOWS, HIGHLIGHTS, BRINGS OUT… some of the authors’ GOALS or their FOCUS in the book.
2. EXPLAIN at least four (4) MAIN POINTS of the discussion of the tree rings of the old diseased hemlock
This book began as an attempt to bring more life to the reading and learn ing of history. As practicing historians, we have been troubled by a grow ing disinterest in or even animosity toward the study of the past. How is it that when we and other historians have found so much that excites curios ity, other people find history irrelevant and boring? Perhaps, we thought, if lay readers and students understood better how historians go about their work-how they examine evidence, how they pose questions, and how they reach answers-history would engage them as it does us.
As often happens, it took a mundane event to focus and clarify our preoc cupations. One day while working on another project, we went outside to watch a neighboring farmer cut down a large old hemlock that had become diseased. As his saw cut deeper into the tree, we joked that it had now bit into history as far back as the Depression. “Depression?” grunted our friend. “I thought you fellas were historians. I’m deep enough now so’s Hoover wasn’t even a gleam in his father’s eye.”
With the tree down, the three of us examined the stump. Our woodcutter surprised us with what he saw.
“Here’s when my folks moved into this place,” he said, pointing to a ring. “1922.”
“How do you know without counting the rings?” we asked.
“Oh, well,” he said, as if the answer were obvious. “Look at the core, here. The rings are all bunched up tight. I bet there’s sixty or seventy-and all within a couple inches. Those came when the place was still forest. Then, you notice, the rings start getting fatter all of a sudden. That’s when my dad cleared behind the house-in ’22-and the tree started getting a lot more light. And look further out, here-see how the rings set together again for a couple years? That’s from loopers.”
“Loopers?” we asked cautiously.
“Sure-loopers. You know. The ones with only front legs and back.” His hand imitated a looping, hopping crawl across the log. “Inchworms. They damn near killed the tree. That was sometime after the war-’49 or ’50.” As
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his fingers traced back and forth among the concentric circles, he spoke of other events from years gone by. Before we returned home, we had learned a good deal about past doings in the area.
Now it occurs to us that our neighbor had a pretty good knack for put ting together history. The evidence of the past, like the tree rings, comes easily enough to hand. But we still need to be taught how to see it, read it, and explain it before it can be turned into a story. Even more to the point, the explanations and interpretations behind the story often turn out to be as interesting as the story itself. After all, the fascination in our neighbor’s account came from the way he traced his tale out of those silent tree rings.
Unfortunately, most readers first encounter history in schoolbooks, and these omit the explanations and interpretations-the detective work, if you will. Textbooks, by their nature, seek to summarize knowledge. They have little space for looking at how that knowledge was gained. Yet the challenge of doing history, not just reading it, is what attracts so many historians. Couldn’t some of that challenge be communicated in a concrete way? That was our first goal.
We also felt that the writing of history has suffered in recent years because some historians have been overly eager to convert their discipline into an unadulterated social science. Undeniably, history would lose much of its claim to contemporary relevance without the methods and theories it has borrowed from anthropology, psychology, political science, econom ics, sociology, and other fields. Indeed, such theories make an important contribution to these pages. Yet history is rooted in the narrative tradition. As much as it seeks to generalize from past events, as do the sciences, it also remains dedicated to capturing the uniqueness of a situation. When histo rians neglect the literary aspect of their discipline-when they forget that good history begins with a good story-they risk losing that wider audi ence that all great historians have addressed. They end up, sadly, talking to themselves.
Our second goal, then, was to discuss the methods of American historians in a way that would give proper due to both the humanistic and scientific sides of history. In taking this approach, we have tried to examine many of the methodologies that allow historians to unearth new evidence or to shed new light on old issues. At the same time, we selected topics that we felt were inherently interesting as stories.
Thus our book employs what might be called an apprentice approach to history rather than the synthetic approach of textbooks. A textbook strives to be comprehensive and broad. It presents its findings in as rational and programmatic a manner as possible. By contrast, apprentices learn through a much less formal process; they learn their profession from artisans who take their daily trade as it comes through the front door. A customer orders a pewter pot? Very well, the artisan proceeds to fashion the pot and in doing so shows the apprentice how to pour the mold. A client needs some engraving done? Then the apprentice receives a first lesson in etching. The apprentice
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method of teaching communicates a broad range of knowledge over the long run by focusing on specific situations.
So also this book. Our discussion of methods is set in the context of spe cific problems historians have encountered over the years. In piecing the individual stories together, we try to pause as an artisan might and point out problems of evidence, historical perspective, or logical inference. Sometimes we focus on problems that all historians must face, whatever their subjects. These problems include such matters as the selection of evidence, historical perspective, the analysis of a document, and the use of broader historical theory. In other cases, we explore problems that are not encountered by all historians but are characteristic of specific historical fields; these include the use of photographic evidence, questions of psychohistory, problems encountered analyzing oral interviews, the value of decision-making mod els in political history, and so on. In each case, we have tried to provide the reader with a sense of vicarious participation-the savor of doing history as well as of reading it.
Given our approach, the ultimate success of this book can be best mea sured in functional terms-how well it works for the apprentices and arti sans. We hope that the artisans, our fellow historians, will find the volume’s implicit as well as explicit definitions of good history worth considering. In choosing our examples, we have naturally gravitated toward the work of those historians we most respect. At the same time, we have drawn upon our own original research in many of the topics discussed; we hope those find ings also may be of use to scholars.
As for the apprentices, we admit to being only modest proselytizers. We recognize that of all the people who read this book, only a few will go on to become professional historians. We do hope, however, that even casual readers will come to appreciate the complexity and excitement that go into the study of the past. History is not something that is simply brought out of the archives, dusted off, and displayed as “the way things really were.” It is a painstaking construction, held together only with the help of assumptions, hypotheses, and inferences. Readers of history who push dutifully onward, unaware of all the backstage work, miss the essence of the discipline. They miss the opportunity to question and to judge their reading critically. Most of all, they miss the chance to learn how enjoyable it can be to go out and do a bit of digging themselves
