Making History: The Storytellers...

 A very recent book review by Douglas Brinkley appearing in The Washington Post caught my eye.  The book  - Richard Cohen’s Making History: The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past - had just been stocked at our local Barnes and Noble; I purchased my copy and began reading eagerly. The author’s contends that when all things considered for historical accuracy and objectivity are applied to a work, it still will reflect “the manner of the author.”   

Cohen takes a wide look at historians who have told us how things were at the time of their happening. He doesn’t neglect to mention such non-historians as William Shakespeare who probably has formed more people’s ideas of the past than other writers of history. He considers the accuracy of New Testament Bible authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and tells us of such historians as Herodotus and Thucsydides.

He speaks a lot about Winston Churchill who he say was not a historian but a participant recorder, persuasive and widely read. Cohen mentions Churchill’s standing among today’s school children who in a survey thought he was a fictional character, but Sherlock Holmes was historical. Teachers of history obviously have some work to do.

Historians like John Keegan, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Barbara Tuchman get high marks from Cohen. Keegan rates an especially strong section in the book supporting and appreciating his style of research and writing. As a presidential biographer he gives Ulysses S. Grant the highest mark. To be honest, I still have reading to do in this volume, but it is the kind of literature I find interesting and thought-provoking. To wit, note the eggs at the side of the book which we hope will soon hatch with new ideas.

I am on Clay Jenkinson’s mailing list and thought his email today spoke very closely to the subject of Cohen’s book. For the magazine he edits called “Governing” he interviewed a historian Garrett Graff who wrote about the Watergate scandal that brought Nixon down. As it stated, “A new history of the scandal claims that famous original reportage was too narrow and missed a ‘weirder, zanier, bigger, and different’ story.” Interesting stuff. Woodward and Bernstein didn’t quite get it all, I guess. And that’s the way with history. New information keeps surfacing and it keeps getting rewritten. I will read on.