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BOOK REVIEWS A Historians Progress. By Roy F. Nichols. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968. Pp. x, 308. $6.95.) This is an intellectual autobiography, the story of a richly varied life with history. From the day in 1899 when, at the age of three, he experienced his first introduction to history, Roy Franklin Nichols seems to have known what he wanted to do and where he wanted to go. A study of the past and its meaning for the present became the focus of a career that has spanned a half century. A Historians Progress is the record of this career; it is also an account of an evolving view of the nature of history and of a persistent and dedicated effort to give it meaning and expression. The study of history, Nichols has concluded, is unique and stands by itself. Neither art nor science, it is sui generis. Its importance cannot be underestimated for it contains the key to an understanding of our own species. "History," Nichols urges, "should be an intellectual instrument, a sophisticated method of identifying, accounting for, and interpreting the meaning of human behavior." Early in his career, Nichols was drawn into an investigation of political history and of that particular, and peculiar, type of man—the politician . "To know history," he wrote in 1923, "is to know the psychology of peoples, to know the psychology of peoples we must know the psychology of individuals, those individuals in history that are most articulate are the politicians." It was a time when political history faced increasing competition from social history. Meeting the challenge, he decided that the two need not be (indeed, should not be) regarded as distinct areas of historical inquiry. The declining interest in political history resulted from the lingering influence of older interpretations which were too narrow in scope; Nichols set for himself the task of redefining political history as a form of social behavior. Two influences were important in molding his outlook. In 1922, he began his teaching career at Columbia University, where he was assigned sections in the Contemporary Civilization program. "It was the greatest educational experience in my life," Nichols recalls, for it "broke the conventional mold of historical thinking" and suggested new directions for his study. The result was a new "frame of reference, involving behavioral determinations within a 'civilization' conceptualization" and offering a "nonnational scheme" that held great promise for his study of political behavior . Secondly, his association with colleagues in the behavioral sciences brought a new appreciation for the subjective element in historical study. Historians, he decided, had been too prone simply to dis73 74CIVIL WAR HISTORY play rather than to explain their labors. What was needed was a greater awareness of work in the social sciences and a closer alliance between the historian and those who were concerned with human dynamics, not only the social scientists but also the practitioners of biology, psychology , biochemistry, and biophysics. The historian, he concluded, had a definite place in the developing science of society for it was he who could add the fourth dimension, a "comprehensive time sense." Students of the Civil War will be most familiar with Nichols' outstanding trilogy on the decade of the fifties as well as his efforts to place the conflict within a broad cultural and evolutionary context. Indeed, those who have sought answers to the baffling questions involved in the coming of the Civil War are deeply indebted to his pioneering work in the political history of the pre-war years. The role of the politician in the period of the war had been neglected; Nichols determined to end this neglect, concluding that "politicians' methods contributed a great deal to the condition that brought on the Civil War." The result was his doctoral dissertation and first published book, The Democratic Machine, 1850-1854. The story was continued with his biography of Franklin Pierce, which provided further opportunity for demonstrating his newly-felt relationship between political and social history ("after all, historical forces must work upon and through human beings "). Nichols' account of the political struggles that led to the Civil War was capped by the publication in 1948 of his superb, Pulitzer Prize-winning...

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