Collection
Language
Publication
Random House Trade Paperbacks (1982), 352 pages
Description
Master historian Barbara W. Tuchman looks at history in a unique way and draws lessons from what she sees. This accessible introduction to the subject of history offers striking insights into America's past and present, trenchant observations on the international scene, and thoughtful pieces on the historian's role. Here is a splendid body of work, the story of a lifetime spent "practicing history."
User reviews
LibraryThing member rivkat
I read Tuchman’s books in high school and had vague memories of them. She’s really into telling coherent stories, but mostly what I got from this essay collection was: wow, she was pretty racist. I especially liked how the Japanese (“Orientals”) were congenitally incapable of negotiating
Show More
fairly because they refused to accept facts, whereas Israelis were so successful because they refused to accept facts. Show Less
LibraryThing member ldmiller
Excellent collection of speeches and essays by Barbara Tuchman, a superb writer who was able to bring history to life. Her works read like novels -- but with documentation that only a historian can appreciate. This collection gives insight into this remarkable writer.
LibraryThing member jcbrunner
This collection of essays is divided into three parts. The first and in my view the best part, based mostly upon speeches, deals with "the craft" of the historian. It offers both insights into her research and writing process and a vigorous defense of history as literature. She justly highlights
The second part "the yield" collects various book reviews and articles, some standing the test of time, some showing their age. The third part "learning from history" is about politics, Nixon and the Vietnam War. Ideas that led to "The March of Folly", a book which has regained relevance (I wished more people had read it before 2003.).
Tuchman is a child of privilege, her grandfather being US ambassador, her uncle US secretary of treasury. Her father owned the magazine on which she was a staff reporter. Her writing is at its best when she writes about the spleens and foibles of her class. This makes The Proud Tower, the Guns of August, the Zimmermann Telegram and Stilwell so vivid. In this collection, she expands and escapes her traditional topics - which reveals, at times, a lack of empathy for others less privileged, others different from her. To me, these essays show a prissy and self-absorbed person (light-years away from the humanity of a Studs Terkel). I love her writing, her personality not so much.
Show More
the importance and her mission of communicating about history with the general public. Thus, she nicely undermines the charge of many academic historians who did not like the intrusion of a non-expert stealing all the(ir?) glory and profiting from their work. What use, however, are their findings if nobody but the anointed knows about them?The second part "the yield" collects various book reviews and articles, some standing the test of time, some showing their age. The third part "learning from history" is about politics, Nixon and the Vietnam War. Ideas that led to "The March of Folly", a book which has regained relevance (I wished more people had read it before 2003.).
Tuchman is a child of privilege, her grandfather being US ambassador, her uncle US secretary of treasury. Her father owned the magazine on which she was a staff reporter. Her writing is at its best when she writes about the spleens and foibles of her class. This makes The Proud Tower, the Guns of August, the Zimmermann Telegram and Stilwell so vivid. In this collection, she expands and escapes her traditional topics - which reveals, at times, a lack of empathy for others less privileged, others different from her. To me, these essays show a prissy and self-absorbed person (light-years away from the humanity of a Studs Terkel). I love her writing, her personality not so much.
Show Less
LibraryThing member keywestnan
If you're interested in writing history -- or just interested in how historians work -- this is a wonderful essay collection. Although Tuchman worked in the era of index cards, not laptops, she makes digging through archives and reading barely legible manuscripts sound like enthralling work.
LibraryThing member moibibliomaniac
I enjoyed reading her book about Stillwell in China many years ago, and enjoyed reading this book this year. If you want to know how history is written, read this book.
LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
Unlike Nero Wolfe of West Thirty Fifth Street by William Baring-Gould, which I believe should be read after completing the Rex Stout mysteries, Practicing History should be read before Tuchman's other books. The first part of Practicing History, "The Craft," is Tuchman's way of explaining how she
The second part of Practicing History, called "The Yield" presents various topics from different articles she has written over the years (Japan, the Spanish Civil War, Woodrow Wilson and the Six-Day War in the middle east). The third and final part of Practicing History includes editorials on the Vietnam War, Watergate and how we can learn from history if one would only listen. We have a hard time doing that as a nation. Why start now?
Tuchman always writes with sharp wit and humor. Practicing History is no different and does not disappoint.
Show More
wrote her books without giving too much away. She makes it possible to look forward to reading The March of Folly and Proud Tower with anticipation.The second part of Practicing History, called "The Yield" presents various topics from different articles she has written over the years (Japan, the Spanish Civil War, Woodrow Wilson and the Six-Day War in the middle east). The third and final part of Practicing History includes editorials on the Vietnam War, Watergate and how we can learn from history if one would only listen. We have a hard time doing that as a nation. Why start now?
Tuchman always writes with sharp wit and humor. Practicing History is no different and does not disappoint.
Show Less
LibraryThing member jeterat
Really enjoyed this book of essays of Barbara Tuchman covering the breadth of her career and primarily focusing on the purpose of history in day-to-day life. A great look at the thoughts of a historian and some of political articles she had written for various national magazines.
LibraryThing member JBGUSA
The introduction is a "must read" for anyone seriously interested in history. She explains how writing history should be from a certain amount of hindsight. I may add to this review later, and just raised my rating from three to four stores based on my own hindsight view of the book.
LibraryThing member tuckerresearch
Tuchman was an amazing historian and narrative writer. Her books on the First World War alone are classics. In some of her early chapters here, on history as a process and discipline, she shines. She adds some wonderful articles from her career that shine. "Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli Dead" is a
Show More
classic of narrative history. (And the inspiration for the great, but historically mangled movie The Wind and the Lion.) However, her FDR-style liberalism, bordering on an extreme naïveté towards Soviet and Maoist communism. She trashes the Vietnam project under LBJ, but then twice as much vitriol toward Nixon. Several article/chapters excoriate Nixon for Watergate, leading to her suggestion for a executive panel of presidents. Her one counterfactual, what-if, history outing here, "If Mao Had Come to Washington," assumes Mao was a normal fellow you could do business with, undermined by dumb Americans who unflinchingly and ignorantly hate socialism/communism. It undermines her, and she betrays her own admonition to make historical hypotheses, when t he history should speak for itself. Like a good twentieth-century liberal, she totally misconstrues (p. 265) the Second Amendment and skips over the whole part about it being a "right of the people." But, I digress.... The first section of the book, "Craft," should be assigned to history students in grad school as a counterweight to the postmodernist/lit-crit ideas that unfortunately permeate the academy. The chapter on biography as history, especially, as credentialed historians often anathematize biography as "not really history" and leave it to popularizers who are often journalists. Show Less
Awards
Notable Books List (1981)
Original language
English
Original publication date
1981
Physical description
352 p.; 5.5 inches
ISBN
0345303636 / 9780345303639