Historians in Public: The Practice of American History., 1890-1970.

Historians in Public: The Practice of American History., 1890-1970. By Ian Tyrrell. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, c. 2005. Pp. xii, 348. Paper, $23.00, ISBN 0-226-82194-3; cloth, $57.00, ISBN 0-22682193-5.)

In a well-conceived, forcefully argued book, Ian Tyrrell reminds historians that public history and the search for a usable past were not the results of the job crisis of the 1970s. Instead, Tyrrell finds the roots of public history deep in the profession's origins. He offers sharp insights and even sharper opinions about individual historians and about trends in the profession. From the very outset of the historical profession in the 1890s, academic historians sought to intervene in public debates and to influence American historical thinking and memory.

Tyrrell explores three areas in which American historians attempted to assert their expertise. First, historians sought to appeal to a general audience through books, film, radio, and television. By the 1920s historians already were bemoaning overspecialization, the loss of general readers, and ultimately the profession's loss of cultural authority in society at large. Second, historians tried to maintain authority, with diminishing success, over curriculums in schools and colleges. Finally, historians strove to control historical practice through the structures of government at both the federal and state levels. In the latter arena, they prevailed. Professional historians replaced amateur historians at the state level and took control of local history.

Tyrrell's book is based on thorough research in institutional records, especially those of the American Historical Association (AHA), the private papers of historians, and published reports and articles from every era. As a result, many long-forgotten or little-known episodes flavor the book. For example, the AHA sponsored a national radio program from 1937 to 1947. Unlike film, in which historians had also dabbled, "[r]adio programs were cheaper to produce, more flexible in format" and content, and easily accessible to schools and families (p. 98). More akin to print than film, radio programs could reflect on current events by giving historical context. The programs received respectable, if not outstanding, ratings.

During the 1920s and 1930s historians, educators, and other social scientists waged a bitter battle over the teaching of history in the schools. The primacy of history declined in the face of a growing emphasis on social studies. As Tyrrell shows, historians by no means were united in that fight. Conservative scholars like Theodore Clarke Smith deplored Charles Beard's attacks on objectivity. Smith compared Beard's interpretation of history to the march of a "'collectivist democracy.'" Smith had encountered one teacher who told him, "'Tell me the kind of citizen you wish to have and I will arrange the kind of school history needed to produce him.'" To Smith such a view reflected "'history as written or taught in Italy, Russia, or Germany'" (p. 125).

In Tyrrell's judgment the high point of historians' public involvement came in the period from 1930 to 1950. With professional historians working in the National Park Service, National Archives, New Deal agencies, Department of Agriculture, and civilian and military units during World War II, public history reached an apogee. Meantime, academically trained historians like Benjamin Shambaugh of Iowa and Christopher Crittenden of North Carolina led the movement to professionalize history in state and local institutions. Local amateurs and patriotic societies gave way to professional historians with a national orientation.

Tyrrell's book traces the arc of historical practice, historiographical fashions, and jeremiads about the decline of history and historians' loss of status from Frederick Jackson Turner and John Franklin Jameson to the challenge of New Left historians in the 1960s. The story, Tyrrell posits, is as much about persistence as change. His book deserves reflection and attention from all historians who ponder the profession's future as well as its past.

JEFFREY J. CROW

North Carolina Office of Archives and History