Review of 'The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Though it's the first book I've read on the historical process and how historians practice their craft, I thought it was a very good introduction. The author relies a little too much on metaphors (as even he himself nearly admits), but aside from that, he packs a lot of information into this small book. There's much more to writing/teaching history than merely reciting facts of the past, and this describes all the processes involved. He also places a target on the backs of other social scientists, and then shoots till it has been obliterated, complaining that they have abandoned what they're supposed to do (represent reality) for models and internal consistency and career advancement. This is obviously true for economists, but Gaddis makes the case that it's true for all social scientists -- that while they have been trying to emulate the 19th century approach of the hard sciences, they …
Though it's the first book I've read on the historical process and how historians practice their craft, I thought it was a very good introduction. The author relies a little too much on metaphors (as even he himself nearly admits), but aside from that, he packs a lot of information into this small book. There's much more to writing/teaching history than merely reciting facts of the past, and this describes all the processes involved. He also places a target on the backs of other social scientists, and then shoots till it has been obliterated, complaining that they have abandoned what they're supposed to do (represent reality) for models and internal consistency and career advancement. This is obviously true for economists, but Gaddis makes the case that it's true for all social scientists -- that while they have been trying to emulate the 19th century approach of the hard sciences, they have missed the more important developments of the 20th century; searching for independent variables has left them with simplistic worldviews that often prove to have little capacity for accurately depicting the real world or predicting the future.
