Explaining One's Self to Clio and Her Colleagues

John Hope Franklin. Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005. xi + 400 pp. Illustrations and index. $25.00.

Jeremy D. Popkin. History, Historians, and Autobiography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. x + 339 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $29.00.

Although these two books appeared just months apart, their textures could not be more different. Quite obviously, one is a full-fledged autobiography while the other provides a vade mecum to a great many: why they were written and what they tell us about history as a discipline. Popkin is concerned with the patterns and dynamics characteristic of a substantial sub-genre of historical writing. Franklin is notably concerned with racism and interracial dynamics as obstacles (but also assistance at times) to personal development and professional achievement. Popkin's view is "macro," and his lessons highlight the tension between subjectivity and the quest for authenticity. Franklin's vision is "micro," and his lessons illuminate the tension between vocational determination and social discrimination. Where Franklin perceives reflections and distortions of social change in a mirror, "as through a glass darkly," Popkin provides a wide and multi-paned window for observing the guild. He depends upon the introspection of others while Franklin draws upon a lifetime of frustrations and accomplishments richly experienced. Yet each book is carefully nuanced in its own distinctive way. To borrow a phrase from Ralph Ellison, both authors are "going to the territory" where members of our guild live and work. They do arrive by way of different routes.

Each book deserves a wide audience among historians of all stripes as well as readers who appreciate autobiography as a genre. Jeremy Popkin is a professor at the University of Kentucky who has specialized in French history. For this project, however, he has ranged very broadly (and exhaustively), drawing upon autobiographies written by numerous Americanists, along with historians from Canada, Australia, and especially western Europe. Popkin defines his quarry as "published personal narratives in which the author's own life is the principal subject, by authors who were also, for at least some substantial part of their lives, professional scholars and, in most cases, teachers of history" (p. 69). He has scrutinized close to three hundred widely varied accounts (books as well as shorter publications); and in determining whether someone qualifies as a historian, Popkin has deliberately chosen to be inclusive. That is one strength among many in a richly textured, meticulously thorough inquiry.

The book begins slowly because the author felt obliged to deal with "theory," meaning what has been written about autobiography as a genre: what it does and does not share with history, biography, and literature. He would have been quite vulnerable to criticism had he not explored such materials, and yet he concedes that "when historians decide to become autobiographers, they are not usually concerned with the issues their project may raise for critical theorists. Instead, they face more down-to-earth challenges. Historians who decide to write about their own life are embarking on a project that is both familiar to them by virtue of their professional experience and yet distinctly different from historical writing" (p. 61).

Within the framework of his three introductory chapters, Popkin offers useful distinctions between the composition of history and autobiography, even when a historian is doing the writing. He observes that, "ironically, the fact that history is a relatively accessible and untheoretical discipline makes it harder rather than easier, to communicate to nonspecialist readers what constitutes outstanding achievement within its ranks" (p. 64). In the realm of special challenges he also notes that autobiography "requires emphasizing narrative over analysis and concrete detail over generalization. The autobiographer has to exercise talents more often associated with the writing of fiction than with the writing of modern scholarly history, such as the creation of convincing portraits of individuals and the (re)construction of believable dialogue" (p. 67...