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Ideas in Context
That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession
The aspiration to relate the past "as it really happened" has been the central goal of American professional historians since the late 19th century. In this remarkable history of the profession, Peter Novick shows how the idea and ideal of objectivity were elaborated, challenged, modified, and defended over the last century.
Drawing on the unpublished correspondence as well as the published writings of hundreds of American historians from J. Franklin Jameson and Charles Beard to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Eugene Genovese, That Nobel Dream is a richly textured account of what American historians have thought they were doing, or ought to be doing, when they wrote history -- how their principles influenced their practice and practical exigencies influenced their principles.
"An astute and provocative account of how the historical profession in American has dealt with its founding myth and central norm -- the ideal of objectivity."
-- Dorothy Ross
Drawing on the unpublished correspondence as well as the published writings of hundreds of American historians from J. Franklin Jameson and Charles Beard to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Eugene Genovese, That Nobel Dream is a richly textured account of what American historians have thought they were doing, or ought to be doing, when they wrote history -- how their principles influenced their practice and practical exigencies influenced their principles.
"An astute and provocative account of how the historical profession in American has dealt with its founding myth and central norm -- the ideal of objectivity."
-- Dorothy Ross
662 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
July 26, 2011
I actually enjoyed this book. Which further proves I'm a dork.
November 16, 2009
Novick gives a fantastic analysis of the changing views on the questions of objectivity and subjectivity in American historiography. How Novick, a European historian, could write so comprehensively and with such depth and for almost 650 pages is amazing.
He is admittedly a historicist, which, he says, "means simply that ... thinking about anything in the past is primarily shaped by my understanding of its role within a particular historical context, and in the stream of history" (7). I was glad to hear him define it that way, because historicism usually means that history is to be explained solely in terms of naturalistic historical causation, which is a sophisticated way of saying that the historian has an anti-supernatural bias. But that doesn't come into play so much on the question of what American historians think about the "objectivity question."
Novick begins with the original objectivity project of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when historians thought they were following Leopold von Ranke's dictum of telling history "wie es eigentlich gewesen" (as it really was). Turns out that Ranke wasn't a pure objectivist who was only trying to be empirically faithful to his sources. Ranke meant telling history not so much as it "really" was but as it "essentially" (eigentlich) was. This meant that through history we access the essences of things, which is more a Romantic than scientific view.
Regardless, the pure objectivist school thought that the purpose of historiography was the scinetific sel-elimination of the historian from the task of researching and presenting history. The historian went into the library the way the scientist enters the laboratory. He collected the facts, which spoke through the historian who was merely a kind of secretary taking dictation. Studies would proceed until all texts and artifacts would have interpreted themselves and historians would have put themselves out of a job. Hard to believe, but Novick painstaking documents it.
Then come the new historians: Fredrick Jackson Turner, Carl Becker, and Charles Beard, whose work spanned pre and post WWI. They hit a nerve when they pointed out that WWI exposed the fact that the Enlightenment "victory of Reason" didn't happen. They also revealed that, far from being objective, most historians had been involved in WWI propaganda, pretending that the allies were good little boys on the way to Sunday school when the evil German bullies picked a fight.
Becker and Beard made it impossible for historians to to go back to their pre-war confidence in objectivity. Then came the expansion of professional history, where objectivity was a function of academic Ph.D. programs, whose graduates went on to work for the Allies of World War II. Once again, American historians aligned themselves with their national power, which didn't encourage their critical faculties. Speaking the truth to power only meant providing sobering military intelligence and lessons from the past, not necessarily telling the truth to power about power. In other words, historians knew who buttered their bread. After the war, historians tended to succumb to the temptation to justify Allied actions, which sometimes meant concealing the whole story or unrealistic appraisals of FDR and Churchill. The new objectivity was not about personal detachment but about being on the right side--the side of the West which now included America. This is also when the Western-Civ class was born.
Novick points out that Christian historians like Kenneth Scott Latourette acknowledged their Christian view of history and defended it as superior to naturalistic and relativistic notions from historicism. Novick points out that they were better than most who tried to keep their ideological commitments a secret. This was also the age of purportedly objective journalism, which Novick explodes with admissions from the journalists themselves.
Other historians, like Karl Popper and Richard Hofstader, abandoned old objectivist notions of "detachment" and "self-elimination" for much more honest "self-examination" and "historical complexity." They argued that historiography was objective and scientific in so far as its claims were falsifiable, positing a kind of "normed objectivism."
With the advent of the sixties every group became their own historians, as black and feminist historiography privileged the newly liberated perspectives of those who had suffered as part of their social group. Partisan scholarship proudly dealt objectivity another blow.
Chapter fifteen tells the story of the postmodern resurrection of subjectivity and the demise of almost any meaningful notion of objectivity. Historicism and relativism had taught historians to bracket moral questions and merely be faithful to the sources, but Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) took the issue of subjectivity even further.
Kuhn, following Michael Polanyi, argued that science doesn't take place in the abstract but within a "paradigm." A paradigm is an accepted model that is, by its very nature, freighted with worldview commitments promoted by the current scientific orthodoxy. Polanyi argued that science and dogma are not antithetical, but are, in the experience of the scientist, wed together in a committed relationship. The scientific community enforces the paradigm to control dissent and promote indoctrination. Thus science is no cure for subjectivity (a lesson that the current crop of new atheists, like R. Dawkins, hasn't learned). According to Kuhn, however, scientific revolutions can and do take place suddenly when the old paradigm (like Newtonian physics) is overthrown by a new paradigm (like Einsteinian physics) which accounts for the problems encountered under of previous paradigm.
Michel Foucault expanded the idea of the paradigm to the "episteme" which included relationships between the sciences and between the sciences and the culture at large. Together they enforce an oppressive "regime of truth" in society.
Richard Rorty argued (in unison with the new paradigm) against stable foundations of any kind. With that foundation squarely in place, his antifoundationalism left us only with a common solidarity in an ongoing conversation. Rorty said: "What matters is our loyalty to other human beings clinging together against the dark, not our hope of getting things right…. Our glory is in our participation in fallible and transitory human projects, not in our obedience to permanent nonhuman constraints" (541). I wonder if he was attempting to get "things right?" Novick points out that Rorty "urged ... the substitution of 'solidarity' for 'objectivity'" (571). So I guess we have solidarity in our subjectivity by which we may say a fond farewell to our former illusions of objectivity. I guess the rest of us must obey this "permanent nonhuman" constraint.
Jacques Derrida chimed in arguing that the relationship between the sign and the thing signified was arbitrary. This means that words and the concepts they signify are not dictated by the words themselves, but by their authors and the readers who play with words and concepts. Thus, words aren't transparent windows on history but opaque symbols revealing "nothing outside the text." Words also subvert their authors by revealing the power play the author is trying to put over on his readers. Isn't the power play signified by the words in the author and thus outside the text? Maybe I don't understand Derrida, but regardless, this pointed the way to new hermeneutic of "Deconstruction" or reducing texts to power.
For literary critic, Stanley Fish, it is the community that teaches interpretation and the interpreter doesn’t discover but makes “ ‘texts, facts, authors, and intentions’.” Standards of right and wrong exist not in the text but within the community. Fish said this is why we can’t agree on an interp of a Shakespearean sonnet though it’s only fourteen lines. "Rational debate is always possible," he hoped, "not, however, because it is anchored in a reality outside it, but b/c it occurs in a history, a history in the course of which realities and anchors have been established, although … they will have to be est. again" (544). If our debates aren't anchored in reality itself but only in a history of literary study then literary history must transcend reality? But if literary history is part of reality, then he hasn't really helped us has he? Also, if there's no reality outside the community then what do separate communities appeal to when the debate one another? Other communities, themselves, or what? And how, if right and wrong exists only in communities, does anyone ever change communities?
Novick doesn't critique these guys (like I've been doing) but only concludes that "the center does not hold," adding that: "In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes." Thank goodness the post-modern community isn't the true Israel. Thank God that the sacred text of the true Israel doesn't end with the book of Judges. The Christian meta-narrative doesn't end in self-defeating despair. It doesn't end in the cynical resignation to power plays and apathy toward meaning.
The relativism of Becker and Beard and the postmodernism of Derrida and Fish have done us a great service by making us more aware of how our preconceptions affect our interpretations and how words get out of our control and reveal our self-centered power plays. Peter Leithart, in Solomon Among the Postmoderns, has argued that Postmodernism reveals that everything under the sun is mere vanity and chasing after the wind, which is the point of Ecclesiastes. But unlike Ecclesiastes, Postmodernism ends in the despair of futility, because it rejects God as the basis of knowledge. It rejects his normative interpretation of the world that is revealed in nature, Scripture, and ultimately in the final judgment.
I would give Novick five stars if he would have taken a sane position on the issue and not written in academia-ese. He once refers to something inconsistent as "problematically consistent." My students choked on this kind of stuff. One student said he tried to understand Novick and another that he tried to slit his wrists with Novick.
Mark Noll's "Christianity and the Possibility of Historical Knowledge," responds well to Novick. Noll argues that only the Christian view of knowledge can restore our confidence in reliable knowledge of any kind. This is because God created the world and us in his image, so that we can know his world. We can trust our senses and our reason because God created them to receive and unlock nature and Scripture. The world can be penetrated by our minds because they are made like God's mind, which knows his world perfectly. The correspondence of our minds to the creation is finite and fallible, especially because of sin, but can also be reliable. The link between the something in my head and the something outside it is established at creation and sustained by God's power upholding his creation.
Thus, I would argue that objectivity is seeing and knowing the world and God as God sees and knows the world and himself. This is humanly possible because we are made in his image, and he has revealed himself in the world but preeminently in the Word made flesh and made text. R.C. Sproul said: "We can grasp the infinite, but we cannot hold the infinite within our grasp." Thus scientific and historical knowledge, as well as personal knowledge of ourselves and each other, can correspond to objective reality or Truth.
But Noll also points out that knowledge is a product of our individual points of view, and thus no two people will ever come to exactly the same perspective. Noll also notes that the Christian view of the fall into sin resonates with relativism. I would argue that what postmoderns call "power" Christians call the sin of ambition and pride. These prejudice our perceptions of the world, but the only response left is not "more power to my power play." The Christian response is: "I repent of my grabbing for power, and I die to self in order to seek God's revelation." In this way, we may, like Noll, steer a course between Scylla of scientific objectivity and the Charybdis of relativism, without falling into the trap of either.
He is admittedly a historicist, which, he says, "means simply that ... thinking about anything in the past is primarily shaped by my understanding of its role within a particular historical context, and in the stream of history" (7). I was glad to hear him define it that way, because historicism usually means that history is to be explained solely in terms of naturalistic historical causation, which is a sophisticated way of saying that the historian has an anti-supernatural bias. But that doesn't come into play so much on the question of what American historians think about the "objectivity question."
Novick begins with the original objectivity project of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when historians thought they were following Leopold von Ranke's dictum of telling history "wie es eigentlich gewesen" (as it really was). Turns out that Ranke wasn't a pure objectivist who was only trying to be empirically faithful to his sources. Ranke meant telling history not so much as it "really" was but as it "essentially" (eigentlich) was. This meant that through history we access the essences of things, which is more a Romantic than scientific view.
Regardless, the pure objectivist school thought that the purpose of historiography was the scinetific sel-elimination of the historian from the task of researching and presenting history. The historian went into the library the way the scientist enters the laboratory. He collected the facts, which spoke through the historian who was merely a kind of secretary taking dictation. Studies would proceed until all texts and artifacts would have interpreted themselves and historians would have put themselves out of a job. Hard to believe, but Novick painstaking documents it.
Then come the new historians: Fredrick Jackson Turner, Carl Becker, and Charles Beard, whose work spanned pre and post WWI. They hit a nerve when they pointed out that WWI exposed the fact that the Enlightenment "victory of Reason" didn't happen. They also revealed that, far from being objective, most historians had been involved in WWI propaganda, pretending that the allies were good little boys on the way to Sunday school when the evil German bullies picked a fight.
Becker and Beard made it impossible for historians to to go back to their pre-war confidence in objectivity. Then came the expansion of professional history, where objectivity was a function of academic Ph.D. programs, whose graduates went on to work for the Allies of World War II. Once again, American historians aligned themselves with their national power, which didn't encourage their critical faculties. Speaking the truth to power only meant providing sobering military intelligence and lessons from the past, not necessarily telling the truth to power about power. In other words, historians knew who buttered their bread. After the war, historians tended to succumb to the temptation to justify Allied actions, which sometimes meant concealing the whole story or unrealistic appraisals of FDR and Churchill. The new objectivity was not about personal detachment but about being on the right side--the side of the West which now included America. This is also when the Western-Civ class was born.
Novick points out that Christian historians like Kenneth Scott Latourette acknowledged their Christian view of history and defended it as superior to naturalistic and relativistic notions from historicism. Novick points out that they were better than most who tried to keep their ideological commitments a secret. This was also the age of purportedly objective journalism, which Novick explodes with admissions from the journalists themselves.
Other historians, like Karl Popper and Richard Hofstader, abandoned old objectivist notions of "detachment" and "self-elimination" for much more honest "self-examination" and "historical complexity." They argued that historiography was objective and scientific in so far as its claims were falsifiable, positing a kind of "normed objectivism."
With the advent of the sixties every group became their own historians, as black and feminist historiography privileged the newly liberated perspectives of those who had suffered as part of their social group. Partisan scholarship proudly dealt objectivity another blow.
Chapter fifteen tells the story of the postmodern resurrection of subjectivity and the demise of almost any meaningful notion of objectivity. Historicism and relativism had taught historians to bracket moral questions and merely be faithful to the sources, but Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) took the issue of subjectivity even further.
Kuhn, following Michael Polanyi, argued that science doesn't take place in the abstract but within a "paradigm." A paradigm is an accepted model that is, by its very nature, freighted with worldview commitments promoted by the current scientific orthodoxy. Polanyi argued that science and dogma are not antithetical, but are, in the experience of the scientist, wed together in a committed relationship. The scientific community enforces the paradigm to control dissent and promote indoctrination. Thus science is no cure for subjectivity (a lesson that the current crop of new atheists, like R. Dawkins, hasn't learned). According to Kuhn, however, scientific revolutions can and do take place suddenly when the old paradigm (like Newtonian physics) is overthrown by a new paradigm (like Einsteinian physics) which accounts for the problems encountered under of previous paradigm.
Michel Foucault expanded the idea of the paradigm to the "episteme" which included relationships between the sciences and between the sciences and the culture at large. Together they enforce an oppressive "regime of truth" in society.
Richard Rorty argued (in unison with the new paradigm) against stable foundations of any kind. With that foundation squarely in place, his antifoundationalism left us only with a common solidarity in an ongoing conversation. Rorty said: "What matters is our loyalty to other human beings clinging together against the dark, not our hope of getting things right…. Our glory is in our participation in fallible and transitory human projects, not in our obedience to permanent nonhuman constraints" (541). I wonder if he was attempting to get "things right?" Novick points out that Rorty "urged ... the substitution of 'solidarity' for 'objectivity'" (571). So I guess we have solidarity in our subjectivity by which we may say a fond farewell to our former illusions of objectivity. I guess the rest of us must obey this "permanent nonhuman" constraint.
Jacques Derrida chimed in arguing that the relationship between the sign and the thing signified was arbitrary. This means that words and the concepts they signify are not dictated by the words themselves, but by their authors and the readers who play with words and concepts. Thus, words aren't transparent windows on history but opaque symbols revealing "nothing outside the text." Words also subvert their authors by revealing the power play the author is trying to put over on his readers. Isn't the power play signified by the words in the author and thus outside the text? Maybe I don't understand Derrida, but regardless, this pointed the way to new hermeneutic of "Deconstruction" or reducing texts to power.
For literary critic, Stanley Fish, it is the community that teaches interpretation and the interpreter doesn’t discover but makes “ ‘texts, facts, authors, and intentions’.” Standards of right and wrong exist not in the text but within the community. Fish said this is why we can’t agree on an interp of a Shakespearean sonnet though it’s only fourteen lines. "Rational debate is always possible," he hoped, "not, however, because it is anchored in a reality outside it, but b/c it occurs in a history, a history in the course of which realities and anchors have been established, although … they will have to be est. again" (544). If our debates aren't anchored in reality itself but only in a history of literary study then literary history must transcend reality? But if literary history is part of reality, then he hasn't really helped us has he? Also, if there's no reality outside the community then what do separate communities appeal to when the debate one another? Other communities, themselves, or what? And how, if right and wrong exists only in communities, does anyone ever change communities?
Novick doesn't critique these guys (like I've been doing) but only concludes that "the center does not hold," adding that: "In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes." Thank goodness the post-modern community isn't the true Israel. Thank God that the sacred text of the true Israel doesn't end with the book of Judges. The Christian meta-narrative doesn't end in self-defeating despair. It doesn't end in the cynical resignation to power plays and apathy toward meaning.
The relativism of Becker and Beard and the postmodernism of Derrida and Fish have done us a great service by making us more aware of how our preconceptions affect our interpretations and how words get out of our control and reveal our self-centered power plays. Peter Leithart, in Solomon Among the Postmoderns, has argued that Postmodernism reveals that everything under the sun is mere vanity and chasing after the wind, which is the point of Ecclesiastes. But unlike Ecclesiastes, Postmodernism ends in the despair of futility, because it rejects God as the basis of knowledge. It rejects his normative interpretation of the world that is revealed in nature, Scripture, and ultimately in the final judgment.
I would give Novick five stars if he would have taken a sane position on the issue and not written in academia-ese. He once refers to something inconsistent as "problematically consistent." My students choked on this kind of stuff. One student said he tried to understand Novick and another that he tried to slit his wrists with Novick.
Mark Noll's "Christianity and the Possibility of Historical Knowledge," responds well to Novick. Noll argues that only the Christian view of knowledge can restore our confidence in reliable knowledge of any kind. This is because God created the world and us in his image, so that we can know his world. We can trust our senses and our reason because God created them to receive and unlock nature and Scripture. The world can be penetrated by our minds because they are made like God's mind, which knows his world perfectly. The correspondence of our minds to the creation is finite and fallible, especially because of sin, but can also be reliable. The link between the something in my head and the something outside it is established at creation and sustained by God's power upholding his creation.
Thus, I would argue that objectivity is seeing and knowing the world and God as God sees and knows the world and himself. This is humanly possible because we are made in his image, and he has revealed himself in the world but preeminently in the Word made flesh and made text. R.C. Sproul said: "We can grasp the infinite, but we cannot hold the infinite within our grasp." Thus scientific and historical knowledge, as well as personal knowledge of ourselves and each other, can correspond to objective reality or Truth.
But Noll also points out that knowledge is a product of our individual points of view, and thus no two people will ever come to exactly the same perspective. Noll also notes that the Christian view of the fall into sin resonates with relativism. I would argue that what postmoderns call "power" Christians call the sin of ambition and pride. These prejudice our perceptions of the world, but the only response left is not "more power to my power play." The Christian response is: "I repent of my grabbing for power, and I die to self in order to seek God's revelation." In this way, we may, like Noll, steer a course between Scylla of scientific objectivity and the Charybdis of relativism, without falling into the trap of either.
September 4, 2012
This book - a 650-page, small-fonted book about the 20th century progression of historical theory - has absolutely no business being as interesting as it is. It's historians writing about the history of historians! Yikes!
But somehow Peter Novick manages to make is a really compelling read, one that's very much centered on the people involved in the desire to figure out just what historians can know about history, and how it fits into the history that's happening around them as they write. He brings in all sorts of relevant currents in American intellectual culture, from the discovery of relativity to cultural anthropology to the development of semiotics and linguistics, as well as the effect of both World Wars. I think it's always good to think about how we can know what we know (or how we can't), and this is one of the more enjoyable books I've read that raises the question. It's intelligent and empathetic, and manages to avoid getting too self-absorbed.
I knocked one star because I think it would have be just as good a book at 400 pages. But it's not a big complaint,
But somehow Peter Novick manages to make is a really compelling read, one that's very much centered on the people involved in the desire to figure out just what historians can know about history, and how it fits into the history that's happening around them as they write. He brings in all sorts of relevant currents in American intellectual culture, from the discovery of relativity to cultural anthropology to the development of semiotics and linguistics, as well as the effect of both World Wars. I think it's always good to think about how we can know what we know (or how we can't), and this is one of the more enjoyable books I've read that raises the question. It's intelligent and empathetic, and manages to avoid getting too self-absorbed.
I knocked one star because I think it would have be just as good a book at 400 pages. But it's not a big complaint,
May 31, 2024
About 200 pages too long, but I’ve never been happier to vicariously live through other historians’ existential dread.
January 5, 2024
As other reviewers have said, it's amazing that Novick was able to write a 600-page, dense monograph on historiography that holds your attention and keeps you interested, but somehow he manages it! (Granted, no one outside the historical profession will think it's a page-turner.)
Novick traces the history of how American historians (as in "historians in the United States" not "historians of the United States") have viewed objectivity and relativism from the 1880s to the 1980s and how claims of objectivity and relativism have been used to promote and attack ideologies and historical arguments. The work is largely descriptive, not interpretive, and is extremely, extremely detailed. It would be a great reference work to look at if you're trying to figure out the perspective of a historian for a historiography section of a paper.
If you had asked me for a general account of the idea of historical objectivity before reading this book, I would have said something like: early twentieth-century historians were largely positivist and believed in a single objective Truth; historians gradually came to view such a position as naive; the 1980s was a time of total relativist, post-modern crisis; more recently we've come to a middle ground. Novick made me realize that such a narrative is simplistic: we've gone through many cycles of objectivity and relativism in the profession, starting much earlier than I realized. (Though, again, it's more complicated than that: even when one side is trending up, some historians are always more objectivist or more relativist than the general zeitgeist.) Times of optimism or consensus in the country tend to lead to a sense of certainty and optimism in the profession, and therefore are more likely times of objectivism. Polarization leads to more relativism (and/or more historians accusing each other of relativism). Curiously, objectivity/relativism were never clearly aligned with any one political or academic ideology--objectivists and relativists could be found across the political spectrum.
Along the way, there are a lot of fascinating side stories, including how the philosophy of science has continually influenced the philosophy of history, the ongoing turf battles between history and the social sciences, the endless fight over whether history belongs in the humanities or in the social sciences, and how early American historians (mis)interpreted their idol, Leopold von Ranke. In particular, there are many fascinating passages on trends in historical education. Our current curriculum fights are not new! Novick quotes many 1920s fights over textbooks that could have been written today.
Novick traces the history of how American historians (as in "historians in the United States" not "historians of the United States") have viewed objectivity and relativism from the 1880s to the 1980s and how claims of objectivity and relativism have been used to promote and attack ideologies and historical arguments. The work is largely descriptive, not interpretive, and is extremely, extremely detailed. It would be a great reference work to look at if you're trying to figure out the perspective of a historian for a historiography section of a paper.
If you had asked me for a general account of the idea of historical objectivity before reading this book, I would have said something like: early twentieth-century historians were largely positivist and believed in a single objective Truth; historians gradually came to view such a position as naive; the 1980s was a time of total relativist, post-modern crisis; more recently we've come to a middle ground. Novick made me realize that such a narrative is simplistic: we've gone through many cycles of objectivity and relativism in the profession, starting much earlier than I realized. (Though, again, it's more complicated than that: even when one side is trending up, some historians are always more objectivist or more relativist than the general zeitgeist.) Times of optimism or consensus in the country tend to lead to a sense of certainty and optimism in the profession, and therefore are more likely times of objectivism. Polarization leads to more relativism (and/or more historians accusing each other of relativism). Curiously, objectivity/relativism were never clearly aligned with any one political or academic ideology--objectivists and relativists could be found across the political spectrum.
Along the way, there are a lot of fascinating side stories, including how the philosophy of science has continually influenced the philosophy of history, the ongoing turf battles between history and the social sciences, the endless fight over whether history belongs in the humanities or in the social sciences, and how early American historians (mis)interpreted their idol, Leopold von Ranke. In particular, there are many fascinating passages on trends in historical education. Our current curriculum fights are not new! Novick quotes many 1920s fights over textbooks that could have been written today.
September 29, 2024
very thorough, very interesting
March 10, 2011
I really hope the earning of a masters in history is not dependent on understanding and/or enjoying this book...
Yikes. Run out and find me a four year old child, I can't make head or tail of this.
Perhaps once I've gone further towards becoming a master this will make more sense. I had to give up.
seven months later...
Well, I am further towards becoming a master, but I really think that the reason I hated this so much last summer was that I was bogged down in the beginning of the book. I've read more than half of it now, but starting in the 20th Century, and it becomes much more interesting. I don't think this is a book you sit down and read, this is really a reference; a reader can pick this book up to examine particular eras in American historiography. If you are wondering, hey, what were the Progressive historians all about again? or what was the deal with the Consensus historians of the 50s? this is the place to turn. Novick has a nice, dry sense of humor, and he really combed the archives to find personal correspondence to liven up his story and ground everything in real people and their relationships. I do not think any non-historian would ever have any desire to read this, and that's fine. It is intended to help historians understand other historians.
Yikes. Run out and find me a four year old child, I can't make head or tail of this.
Perhaps once I've gone further towards becoming a master this will make more sense. I had to give up.
seven months later...
Well, I am further towards becoming a master, but I really think that the reason I hated this so much last summer was that I was bogged down in the beginning of the book. I've read more than half of it now, but starting in the 20th Century, and it becomes much more interesting. I don't think this is a book you sit down and read, this is really a reference; a reader can pick this book up to examine particular eras in American historiography. If you are wondering, hey, what were the Progressive historians all about again? or what was the deal with the Consensus historians of the 50s? this is the place to turn. Novick has a nice, dry sense of humor, and he really combed the archives to find personal correspondence to liven up his story and ground everything in real people and their relationships. I do not think any non-historian would ever have any desire to read this, and that's fine. It is intended to help historians understand other historians.
September 17, 2014
Read this for grad class on theory, much like most of the other reviewers on here.
I wholeheartedly agree with most of the previous reviewers that no one in their right mind (read: not in a history grad program) should have any inclination or desire to pick this up. Now, I personally detest theory, my soul dies a little every time I go to my class dedicated to it... but I enjoyed this book. This may be the first theory-centric book that I did not daydream about torching. While I struggle to see how much of the theory we study influences or fits into my own work, Novick's in depth discussion of "the objectivity question" is highly relevant, I think, to all historians, regardless of specialization or focus. Maybe particularly *because* we insist on having specialization and focus.
It's a history of historians thinking about history, and that's just so rarely exciting, but Novick does a good job of examining the idea of objectivity from all angles, something that historians really do need to think about.
A good (short!) companion piece to this is Thomas Haskill's wonderful review. After reading Novick, Haskill puts into words exactly what about Novick's argument makes you uncomfortable, but then shows why that's kind of okay.
I wholeheartedly agree with most of the previous reviewers that no one in their right mind (read: not in a history grad program) should have any inclination or desire to pick this up. Now, I personally detest theory, my soul dies a little every time I go to my class dedicated to it... but I enjoyed this book. This may be the first theory-centric book that I did not daydream about torching. While I struggle to see how much of the theory we study influences or fits into my own work, Novick's in depth discussion of "the objectivity question" is highly relevant, I think, to all historians, regardless of specialization or focus. Maybe particularly *because* we insist on having specialization and focus.
It's a history of historians thinking about history, and that's just so rarely exciting, but Novick does a good job of examining the idea of objectivity from all angles, something that historians really do need to think about.
A good (short!) companion piece to this is Thomas Haskill's wonderful review. After reading Novick, Haskill puts into words exactly what about Novick's argument makes you uncomfortable, but then shows why that's kind of okay.
May 22, 2018
A bit long-winded, but Peter Novick gives a good description of the history of the history profession in the United States.
July 10, 2025
I underestimated the weight of this book. A lot of reviewers seem surprised that Novick could write a 600+ page book on historiography, that doesn't surprise me per se, there has been a lot of historical scholarship, big personalities, and intellectual trends, feuds and alliance since the 1880s, but the breadth and depth of Novick's writing is impressive. More than anything I was attracted to Novick's light touch on weighty and specialized material. He has a dry sometimes sarcastic, sometimes ironic style that can help cut through the esoteric nature of the relativist crisis of the interwar period, the emergence of the left historiography in the 1960s, the cultural turn of the 70s-80s, or any other numerous eras and issues that he arrives at. I did tune out some of the block quotes and content footnotes. The footnotes! Novick the David Foster Wallace of historiography. footnoting the end of paragraphs, and then including clusters of sources with detailed and often quite entertaining explanations or glosses of material. There are books to be written in the notes.
I highlighted so much, so many names, so many books. So much of it feels both vitally important and hopelessly dated. My head is spinning after plowing through it all in three days. I hope to come back and spend time with each of the four major divisions at some point. It is a book deserving of extended engagement, critique, and appreciation.
I highlighted so much, so many names, so many books. So much of it feels both vitally important and hopelessly dated. My head is spinning after plowing through it all in three days. I hope to come back and spend time with each of the four major divisions at some point. It is a book deserving of extended engagement, critique, and appreciation.
August 31, 2024
This probably isn't the book for the casual reader of history, fascinating as that subject is. At 648 pages, That Noble Dream is late University of Chicago history professor Peter Novick’s decades-long trip through the struggles historians have faced trying to refine and sometimes define just what it is they do.
This can be a dense trip through the thicket of historical writing, at times down right engaging (for this reader especially his descriptions of the historical writings produced in and about the 20th century). Novick cites numerous historians, known and relatively unknown, who argued and changed as they chased the holy grail of objectivity (even as they tried to decide what constitutes objectivity). But, alas, at other times the Novick’s trip is a trudge. That's not to say his effort lacks less value. There most certainly is value in understanding trying to fathom what and how history is written. It is to say, this work probably would appeal more the graduate level student of history/historiography.
Mercifully, The Noble Dream is footnoted allowing the reader to avoid endlessly flipping to the back of the book to find sources in the end notes. But be warned: the body type is small, the numerous inserted quotes smaller still, and the footnotes printed in agate type.
This can be a dense trip through the thicket of historical writing, at times down right engaging (for this reader especially his descriptions of the historical writings produced in and about the 20th century). Novick cites numerous historians, known and relatively unknown, who argued and changed as they chased the holy grail of objectivity (even as they tried to decide what constitutes objectivity). But, alas, at other times the Novick’s trip is a trudge. That's not to say his effort lacks less value. There most certainly is value in understanding trying to fathom what and how history is written. It is to say, this work probably would appeal more the graduate level student of history/historiography.
Mercifully, The Noble Dream is footnoted allowing the reader to avoid endlessly flipping to the back of the book to find sources in the end notes. But be warned: the body type is small, the numerous inserted quotes smaller still, and the footnotes printed in agate type.
May 30, 2020
A fascinating exposition of the rise and fall of objectivism as the governing norm of historical practice, divided into four movements: the establishment of the ideal with historical professionalization (1880-1915), the challenge from early relativism in the Progressive era (1915-1940), the attempted revision in postwar consensus history (1940-1960), and the final collapse during the counterculture movement and postmodern turn (1960-1988). Insisting that his aim is not to defend a thesis but simply to make fellow historians more "self-conscious" about their enterprise, Novick (writing in 1988) offers no prospects for the future of the discipline (in fact, such a thing "has ceased to exist") - though, given the premise, this "neutral" posture seems, at best, curious, and, at worst, inconsistent (or at least a missed opportunity for what would surely be some insightful constructive suggestions).
August 23, 2024
An “inside baseball” account of the evolution of the academic historical profession in the US. Novick traces this evolution from its precursor in German historical scholarship as developed by Leonard von Ranke in the mid-1800s. He then loosely periodizes the evolution from its beginnings in the 1880s to pre-WWI Presentism to Interwar Relativism to a return to Objectivism in the postwar period. The Cold War ushered in the New Left Revisionism, which gave way to Radical Relativism in the 1960s. He concluded that the academy came full circle with the Neo-objectivists in the 1980s.
While the book has a logical chronological flow, it is hard to follow unless the reader has an extensive knowledge of American historians, philosophical debates, epistemological issues, and esoteric academic concerns. It is a ponderous tome, but provides valuable reference material for historiographic scholarship.
While the book has a logical chronological flow, it is hard to follow unless the reader has an extensive knowledge of American historians, philosophical debates, epistemological issues, and esoteric academic concerns. It is a ponderous tome, but provides valuable reference material for historiographic scholarship.
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September 10, 2025This is a really interesting book! That being said, I don't think non-historians or non-historians in training would want to read this. In essence it's a study of historians throughout history arguing about how to study history. As my grandpa would call it, it's pedantic to those who don't understand the nuances and importance of this. It's important for graduate students to read it, because it's going to affect the way we approach studying history. We can never really truly be objective, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't at least try. I wonder where the pendulum will swing next in academia.
As I will add in every review of the books I have to read for these courses, I got an 89% on my critical review :( I'll do better next time!
As I will add in every review of the books I have to read for these courses, I got an 89% on my critical review :( I'll do better next time!
June 28, 2020
I read this book for the first time some thirty years ago as a graduate history student. I decided to return to it in preparation for an historiography class with a couple of talented students as well as the personal curiosity of reassessing it as a senior history professor. It's just as thought-provoking and engaging--even many of the footnotes make worthwhile reading--as I recall it being decades ago. My favorite part is still the same as it was the first time that I read it, too: an account of a Ph.D. oral exam at Columbia that took part in the midst of the 1968 strike there (pp.428-9).
October 11, 2025
A compelling way for historians and non-historians alike to consider how history is studied, written, analyzed, and re-analyzed as we consider histories of ideas, professions, identities, and people, and how who wrote what matters and when it was written matters as well. A lot to consider in this book and well worth your time if you are a historian or someone who engages in aspects of historical work or study.
July 19, 2017
This one took me a while to finish reading, considering how many times I went back through it, but it is very interesting if you wonder what some of the happenings behind the historical profession are. Outside of it being analytical and factual, there is no real narrative in this book, so it isn't a good pick for those looking for creative narration on historical events or historical fiction.
August 26, 2021
A look at the History profession in the United States, specifically how historians have understood "objectivity" in their profession. Rather long and dry in some places but a well researched and informative read.
October 3, 2025
I'm sad this book is still being taught in graduate history seminars to help students learn the history of the profession. It is long and very dry. If Novick has to be taught, surely he authored an article that sums up his argument without making students read a bad book of this size?
December 31, 2019
First chapter provides an interesting read for those considering the nature of history
January 14, 2020
Brilliant and luminously written
September 8, 2022
Pretty boring but I suppose someone needed to historicize the historians.
December 15, 2022
greatest book of gossip ever written
October 10, 2024
i thought i was having a stroke while reading this
October 19, 2025
Read this book for graduate school. It is quite lengthy, but brings up a lot of great things for historians to consider. Nothing is settled by this book, and that seems to be the point.
March 5, 2017
Read this for my graduate degree in American Studies. Extraordinarily dense, and certainly written for fellow academics; however, if one loves American history (which I do) it was worth the mental heavy lifting to read. I had to write one-page summaries for each of the book's four sections, which helped me to organize the work and my thoughts regarding it. I'd recommend trying to summarize it as you go, even if it feels like cutting through the Amazon rainforest with nothing but a dull machete in hand.
February 16, 2011
Peter Novick’s That Noble Dream offers an incredible analysis of the changing views on the questions of objectivity in American historiography. Novick begins with the initial objectivity project of the nineteenth century when American historians believed they were following German historian Leopold von Ranke’s motto “wie es eigentlich gewesen” (as it really was). In actuality, Ranke was not a pure objectivist. His approach more accurately defined was to tell history not so much as it “really” was but as it “essentially” (eigentlich) was. In other words, through history, historians access the essence of things, which results in a more romantic than scientific view. Either case, American historians would enthrone “objectivity” as the goal of their profession. This summarizes the first section of Novick’s book. The following three sections focus on historiography in America throughout the 20th century. Novick discusses historians and the relativist movement, the integration of relativist insight into a more flexible practice of history, and the last section dealing with “Objectivity in crisis” where historiography sees the discrediting of any unifying ideal.
Novick explains in each section how the ideal of objectivity was reinforced by an ideological group of professional historians while being influenced by the philosophies of outside sources, i.e. other scholarly disciplines and politics. Historians utilized objectivity as the gauge for career advancement and as prevention against conflict within their profession. For example, American historians believed that objectivity would protect American students from the evils and distortions of propaganda, especially during the Cold War era against totalitarianism.
Novick concludes that for historiography “the center does not hold” adding that “In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” Fortunately the post-modern historical community will not conclude with the book of Judges. Post-modernism opens a new door to historiography, one that reveals all. In other words, each different reading of history can add to the general understanding of the past as a whole thus leaving historians to continue on with their practice.
That Noble Dream is thoroughly researched with engaging footnotes and commentary, making it useful for any graduate student of history. This book explores the objectivity question, engaging discussion on the aspects that influence objectivity, such as science, literature, or politics. Novick reminds us that as historians we should constantly be aware of the discussion on the objectivity question and how social issues might affect the way in which we answer it.
Novick explains in each section how the ideal of objectivity was reinforced by an ideological group of professional historians while being influenced by the philosophies of outside sources, i.e. other scholarly disciplines and politics. Historians utilized objectivity as the gauge for career advancement and as prevention against conflict within their profession. For example, American historians believed that objectivity would protect American students from the evils and distortions of propaganda, especially during the Cold War era against totalitarianism.
Novick concludes that for historiography “the center does not hold” adding that “In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” Fortunately the post-modern historical community will not conclude with the book of Judges. Post-modernism opens a new door to historiography, one that reveals all. In other words, each different reading of history can add to the general understanding of the past as a whole thus leaving historians to continue on with their practice.
That Noble Dream is thoroughly researched with engaging footnotes and commentary, making it useful for any graduate student of history. This book explores the objectivity question, engaging discussion on the aspects that influence objectivity, such as science, literature, or politics. Novick reminds us that as historians we should constantly be aware of the discussion on the objectivity question and how social issues might affect the way in which we answer it.
April 13, 2014
When history was forming as an academic discipline and profession in the United States during the 1880s, the American Historical Association (founded in 1884) championed objectivity--purging oneself of external loyalties and producing disinterested historical truth--as the key component of good history making. This "noble dream" of objective history production was accepted largely by historians as a self-evident virtue that would inevitably lead to converging historical works that depicted the one, ultimate truth of human history. Peter Novick chronicles the historiography of American historians and their conflicted and nuanced relationship with objectivity. While relativism challenged it during the interwar years and new history questioned objective assumptions again in the 1960s, objectivity continues to surface as a noble aim for historians though this view is far from uniform.
History as a practice and a profession in America owes a great deal to European precedents--particularly from 19th century Germany. Leopold von Ranke had a disproportionate influence on American historiography due to his use of previously unused sources and documents, his high volume of publications and works produced, and his successful training techniques of history students using the seminar method. Although Novick demonstrates that Americans misinterpreted and misrepresented Ranke in myriad ways, he was naturalized and essentialized for his commitment to reveal the past "as it really was"--to show empirically and objectively the way history occurred. Novick highlights how by the last third of the twentieth century, history as a profession had become fragmented into a study of multiple cultures, histories, and perspectives that in no way converged as the founders of the AHA had anticipated.
"As the scientizing of history had provided the discipline with a stable objectivist foundation, the historicizing of science destabilized that foundation" (537).
This is an academic book about historiography, but it is well-written. Novick makes intelligent, well-cited arguments and limits excessive detailing for the most part. He is thorough but not overly exhaustive. If you have an interest in how historians have developed their practice and why objectivity is considered a virtue that is difficult to come by, then this is well worth your time. For a quick read, look elsewhere.
*(Full disclosure for those keeping track of pages read: I read pages 1-319, 469-572 for class--definitely the majority of the book, but not all of it.)
History as a practice and a profession in America owes a great deal to European precedents--particularly from 19th century Germany. Leopold von Ranke had a disproportionate influence on American historiography due to his use of previously unused sources and documents, his high volume of publications and works produced, and his successful training techniques of history students using the seminar method. Although Novick demonstrates that Americans misinterpreted and misrepresented Ranke in myriad ways, he was naturalized and essentialized for his commitment to reveal the past "as it really was"--to show empirically and objectively the way history occurred. Novick highlights how by the last third of the twentieth century, history as a profession had become fragmented into a study of multiple cultures, histories, and perspectives that in no way converged as the founders of the AHA had anticipated.
"As the scientizing of history had provided the discipline with a stable objectivist foundation, the historicizing of science destabilized that foundation" (537).
This is an academic book about historiography, but it is well-written. Novick makes intelligent, well-cited arguments and limits excessive detailing for the most part. He is thorough but not overly exhaustive. If you have an interest in how historians have developed their practice and why objectivity is considered a virtue that is difficult to come by, then this is well worth your time. For a quick read, look elsewhere.
*(Full disclosure for those keeping track of pages read: I read pages 1-319, 469-572 for class--definitely the majority of the book, but not all of it.)
November 2, 2010
Historians and scholars of many disciplines have long grappled with the pursuit of objectivity or truths within their work. This cumbersome and unrealistic (nope sorry not a purist!) task has challenged the way historians think about history and the historical method. Novick gives us a concise history of historians' multiple attempts at answering the question of objectivity and historical method. He focuses too much on relativism vs. pragmatism...I'd like to think the question of objectivity is more multifarious that this these polarized schools of thought. But nevertheless That Noble Dream challenges historians and scholars alike to question the agenda/method of their work. Great read if you are entering academia.
Wouldn't quite call it pleasure reading. :)
Wouldn't quite call it pleasure reading. :)
April 15, 2012
First off let me say this, this book is a pain to read. A very fascinating book with an insight that all history students and writers of any intellectual field should read. But it still is very difficult to read. Had to read this for a historical theory class in grad school and even the teacher said don't read much in one sitting your mind will rebel the book is just that dry. Still its a very informative book bring the reader about 100 years of the changes that have happened over the intellectual field and why it is still like it today. So if you want to have a very good understanding of the objective thought process in the history field read this book but don't try to read much in one sitting.
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