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Historically Speaking November/December 2007 Historically Speaking November/December Vo!. IX No. 2 Contents Historians and the Public: Premature Obituaries, Abiding Laments EricAmesen "Darktown Parade": African Americans in the Berlin Olympics of 1936 David Clay Large Recentering the West: A Forum Western Exceptionalism and Universality Revisited John M. Headley Beyond the Sonderweg Sanjay Subrahmanyam Recentering the West? Response to John Headley Constantin Fasott Decolonizing "Western Exceptionalism and Universality" One More Time John M. Hobson Response John M. Headley A Tocqueville Tide JohnLukacs Jeremy Black on George III: An Interview Conducted by Donald A. Yerxa 12 14 16 18 20 23 British Abolitionism and the Question of Moral Progress in History: Further Reflections Comments on Methodism. Abolitionism, 25 and PopularHistory David Brion Davis Thoughts on Moral Progress in History 26 Eamon Duffy Triumph Forsaken? A Forum on Mark Moyar's Revisionist History of the Vietnam War, 1 9541965 Introduction29 Donald A. Yerxa Review ofTriumph Forsaken30 QiangZhai A Vietnamese War32 Keith W. Taylor Commenton Triumph Forsaken33 Charles Hill Triumph Impossible35 Jim Dingeman Commentaryon Triumph Forsaken36 Robert F. Turner Response to Triumph Forsaken38 Michael und A Real Debate39 MarkMoyar History overthe Water. Ages ofFaith and 42 Ages of Tenor Derek Wilson Letters43 The Historical Society's 2008 Conference: 45 Migration, Diaspora, Ethnicity, & Nationalism in History Historians and the Public: Premature Obituaries, Abiding Laments Eric Arnesen • bituaries for individuals usually come once, at the end of a lifetime; obituaries for social phenomena, cultural trends, or institutions , in contrast, can come often and enjoy a long shelf life. Let me begin with the former before moving on to the latter . The recent passing of historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. has occasioned, appropriately, numerous obituaries in the press. Given his stature within the profession, his participation in government , his role as a public figure, and the scope of his scholarship, it should hardly be surprising that daily newspapers, rarely accustomed to probing or assessing the lives and works of those of us in the history business, run tributes to such a prominent and influential figure. But Schlesingers death also afforded commentators the opportunity to resurrect and recycle a decades-old obituary—an ongoing lament, really— for a figure of a different sort: the public historian. "America lost its last great public historian" when Schlesinger died, declared book review editor Sam Tanenhaus in the New York Times. Along with the late Richard Hofstadter and C. Vann Woodward, Schlesinger "stood at the forefront of a remarkable generation of academic historians" who penned "classic works that reanimated the past even as they rummaged in it for clues to understanding, if not solving, the most pressing political questions of the present." The combination of their intellectual weight and engagement with issues of contemporary relevance ensured that "new books by these historians often generated excitement and conveyed an urgency felt not only by other scholars but also by the broader population of informed readers." Younger historians today no longer write with the "authority" found in Schlesinger^ work, according to Tanenhaus, for they seem "unable to engage the world as confidenti}' as Mr. Schlesinger did." Compared to the greats like Schlesinger, historians today have "shrunk"; their work cannot be "said to have affected how many of us think about current issues."' The last great public historian? Scholars no longer writing with authority and unwilling to engage the world? Shrunken historians? If nothing else, Tanenhaus struck a raw nerve; his tribute to Schlesinger and his disparagement of the current historical profession have occasioned sharp rebukes from those on the Left and the Right. Barbara Weinstein, president of the American Historical AsArthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. in a debate on the David Susskind Show, 1979.© Bettmann/CORBIS. sociation, rejects Tanenhaus's "dyspeptic assessment ," arguing that it is "redolent of nostalgia for an era when almost all major historians (not to mention politicians) were white males, and when it was possible to speak with the 'natural authority' of a privileged sector." Historians today, she notes, "keep our distance (from political leaders) not out of distaste for the rough and tumble world of political debate , or lack of keen insight, but to maintain a critical edge that often gets blunted by too close a relationship with those we...

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