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1. The History Book Club Offers the Past as an “Image of Ourselves”
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21 1 The His tory Book Club Of fers the Past as an “Image of Our selves” In the short span of one life time, the per sonal con tri bu tion of the in di vid ual scholar to the great and grow ing stream of knowl edge can’t be more than a tiny pail ful. But if he could in spire—or pro voke—other schol ars to pour in their pail fuls too, well, then he could feel that he had really done his job. And this job of mak ing sense of his tory is one of the cry ing needs of our day—I beg of you, be lieve me. Ar nold J. Toyn bee, in The Pat tern of the Past: Can We De ter mine It?, by Pieter Geyl, Ar nold J. Toyn bee, and Pit i rum A. Sor o kin The fu ture is just a pool that ideol o gies go a-fishing in. It is only by the most vig or ous ef fort that we can make of the past any thing but a sim i lar fish ing pool. Ber nard De Voto, “Notes on the American Way” The mo ment seemed pro pi tious. In 1947 his to rian Ber nard De Voto sensed that there was an awak en ing of a “grow ing na tional con scious ness about the American past. Not only read ers but writ ers are turn ing to it in in creas ing num bers,” which meant a “vast pro duc tion of books about our past.”1 A con tem po rary re ferred to a post war “boom in American his tory.”2 To gether with 22 E The Past as an “Image of Ourselves” the new abun dance arose the ques tion of how inter ested Americans could fig ure out which his to ries should be read, and which could be ig nored. Once they de cided that his tory might have some thing im por tant to say, to them and to their age, where should they begin? If it were pos sible for con cerned his to rians to guide the gen eral pub lic, De Voto thought, per haps his tory might re al ize its po ten tial as a source of knowl edge that would help to create an in formed cit i zenry, some thing many Americans be lieved was vital as the na tion took on greater glo bal re spon sibil ities. Per haps read ers in every part of the coun try, of var i ous back grounds and ed u ca tion lev els, could learn from the same ed u ca tive texts, in turn lead ing to ward a broadly shared and so phis ti cated con scious ness of the past. The prom ise of the His tory Book Club (HBC) was that it would allow a se lect group of his to rians, ac tively en gaged in con tem po rary af fairs, to show thou sands of other Americans how the past, as they knew it, in formed the present. The HBC ad ver tised the prom ise of his tor i cal an swers to these ques tions: “How did we get this way? What are we? And can our way of liv ing sur vive?”3 For a while, the club op er ated along these lines: like a purpose-driven course in di rected read ings rather than a dis count book seller. But a ten sion ex isted between ed u ca tion and profit, and the char ter group of historian-editors quickly con cluded that, at the HBC, the profit mo tive super seded their goals for his tory ed u ca tion. The first year of the club’s ex is tence thus stands sep ar ate from its later years when a new co hort took over the du ties but not the at ti tude or ob jec tives of ed i tor Ber nard De Voto and his like-minded col leagues. For sev eral years the club con tin ued to func tion as De Voto hoped it would, but by the end of the 1950s it lost its co her ent phi lo so phy. The se lec tive his tory, meant to con vey some spe cific rel e vance to the con tem po...