Past Imperfect Facts, Fictions, Frauds - American History From Bancroft And Parkman To Ambro... Book

Ultimately a plea to popular presses, filmmakers, and academic historians and their organizations to take whatever steps they can to reduce what could be termed academic dishonesty, including plagiarism and falsifications, even outside academe, this book is primarily a history of history writing. The first half is a broad history of the trends in history writing in general, for purposes of laying the groundwork for Hoffer's argument about what contributed to the incidents in the second half. Those incidents, the more focused histories of four case studies of such academic dishonesty, felt that they read more quickly to me, but in actuality, my pace throughout the book was fairly consistent (I actually timed myself, and the entire book took about 9 hours, with occasional underlining along the way). I worried that Hoffer would ultimately excuse those writers in his case studies due to the structure of the book, but instead, he provides what feels a balanced, nuanced account of all the circumstances one should take into consideration when judging these cases, as well as his opinion and the reasons for it in the end. For me, the book speaks to many truths -- about academic writing, about honesty, about humanity in the process of both -- which I will outline further in the book review I need to write for class this week. I do see its use value for history graduate students in particular, but if I have any major criticism of the book, it is that focus on and primacy of history itself as the central force, when I would disagree at times with that assessment, from my own experience in English departments. This book likely has broader relevance than even its author realizes, although its presentation otherwise makes it unlikely to serve such a purpose.