The academic history profession is in a heap of trouble. Many historians have lost the ability to write clearly about important topics. Instead, they write for their peers on ever more obscure issues—"more and more about less and less," as James McPherson has put it. Additionally, impelled by a 1960s' mindset, many academic historians see their job as "debunking myths." In some cases, such debunking is necessary, but all too often, the goal seems to be to expose all that has gone before, especially if it involves the United States, as "a record of crime and folly."
Fortunately, there are many historians who resist this approach. They are capable of challenging the conventional wisdom when necessary but they keep their eyes on what is important and expand our knowledge rather than constrict it. Two such excellent new books are examples of what historians can accomplish: Washington's Crossing by the eminent David Hackett Fischer, and Valley Forge Winter by Wayne Bodle. Both works are examples of what has been called the "new military history," an approach that places war and warfare into its social and political context.
Washington's Crossing begins by confronting an example of the sort of historical iconoclasm that characterizes so much of current historical writing. The iconography being "deconstructed" in this case is Emmanuel Leutze's splendid painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware. On a National Public Radio broadcast in 2002, a commentator claimed that Washington Crossing the Delaware bore little resemblance to "historical reality" and cited many examples of the painting's "historical flaws" to support her argument. Fischer takes such an approach to task, writing that while the commentator might have been right about some of the details (though wrong about others) she had missed the "accuracy of its major themes." Had she and others like her done so, he observes, they might have discovered "that the larger ideas in Emmanuel Leutze's art are true to the history that inspired it."
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