The Pursuit of Truth

by William H. McNeill

William H. McNeill's seminal book The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963) received the National Book Award in 1964 and was later named one of the 100 best nonfiction books of the twentieth century by the Modern Library. From his post at the University of Chicago, McNeill became one of the first contemporary North American historians to write world history, seeking a broader interpretation of human affairs than prevailed in his youth. This candid, intellectual memoir from one of the most famous and influential historians of our era, The Pursuit of Truth charts the development of McNeill's thinking and writing over seven decades. At the core of his worldview is the belief that historical truth does not derive exclusively from criticizing, paraphrasing, and summarizing written documents, nor is history merely a record of how human intentions and plans succeeded or failed. Instead, McNeill believes that human lives are immersed in vast overarching processes of change. Ecological circumstances frame and limit human action, while in turn humans have been able to alter their environment more and more radically as technological skill and knowledge increased. McNeill believes that the human adventure on earth is unique, and that it rests on an unmatched system of communication. The web of human communication, whether spoken, written, or digital, has fostered both voluntary and involuntary cooperation and sustained behavioral changes, permitting a single species to spread over an entire planet and to alter terrestrial flows of energy and ideas to an extraordinary degree. Over the course of his career as a historian, teacher, and mentor, McNeill expounded the range of history and integrated it into an evolutionary worldview uniting physical, biological, and intellectual processes. Accordingly, The Pursuit of Truth explores the personal and professional life of a man who affected the way a core academic discipline has been taught and understood in America.

Genres: World History, History, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Biography

208 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2005

About the author

William Hardy McNeill was a historian and author, noted for his argument that contact and exchange among civilizations is what drives human history forward, first postulated in The Rise of the West (1963). He was the Robert A. Milikan Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1947 until his retirement in 1987.
In addition to winning the U.S. National Book Award in History and Biography in 1964 for The Rise of the West, McNeill received several other awards and honors. In 1985 he served as president of the American Historical Association.
In 1996, McNeill won the prestigious Erasmus Prize, which the Crown Prince of the Netherlands Willem-Alexander presented to him at Amsterdam's Royal Palace.
In 1999, Modern Library named The Rise of the West of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the 20th century.
In 2009, he won the National Humanities Medal. In February 2010, President Barack Obama, a former University of Chicago professor himself, awarded McNeill the National Humanities Medal to recognize "his exceptional talent as a teacher and scholar at the University of Chicago and as an author of more than 20 books, including The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963), which traces civilizations through 5,000 years of recorded history".

Reviews

[Sense of History]

I should have known: reading an autobiography of an idol always contains the risk of damaging the image of the person one admires. And I’m afraid that was the case with this “Pursuit of Truth” (who invented this preposterous title? Not McNeill, I’m sure). To me, William McNeill (1917-2016) still is the flag bearer of one of the most exciting developments in the study of history: he is the father of what now is called World History/Global History/Big History (and a few others such as Connected, Transnational etc). But these professional memoirs contain nothing spectacular on this subject: McNeill gives an overview of his academic career and publications, and, above all, he stresses his own merits but also his defects (very frank and open) and makes some reckonings with people and institutions that have thwarted him.

Two things stand out:
1. McNeill was a very classic academic, hyper-individualistic and stubbornly going his own way, and at the same time very surprised that so few listened to him. It’s a remarkable detail that on his retirement in 1987 the University of Chicago just cancelled the courses on World History. McNeill rightfully says that he played an important part in the start of World History, but from his memoirs you can clearly see that the success of this new current is due to others.
2. McNeill’s approach in his professional work was incredibly intuitive; he speaks plainly of a “penchant for reckless generalization” and “speculative recklessness”. The way he wrote his masterpiece The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community (1963), is nothing short of upsetting: he studied 1 civilization or region for 6 weeks, wrote out a chapter, and proceeded that way till the end. In a way he confirms what the critics of his work always said, but at the same time he turns this rather improvised approach in his favour; because despite the speculative aspect of his work, at the end he has gotten things right on many domains. And don't intuition and speculation also produce many breakthroughs in the natural sciences?

Despite the defects of this autobiography William H. McNeill certainly remains an inspiring model. Even more so: this book to me has made this giant of historiography so much more humane. Especially the last chapter is interesting in that respect: McNeill says that he seems to have gathered his most important insights about the history of the human race after his retirement (he remained very productive for more than 25 years after that). That surely gives hope to all of us!

[Marc Lamot · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is interesting for the die-hard fans of World/Global/Big...History, because McNeill was one of the fathers of this recent current in the study of history. As an autobiography it's very disappointing (with a really presumptuous title). But - as always with McNeill – it contains lots of interesting views. See also my Senseofhistory-alias: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...