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Rating: 
Summary: Get it for the Two Essays on The Historian
Review: "Practicing History", by Barbara W. Tuchman, sub-titled "Selected Essays". Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1981.This book is a collection of essays written by the noted Historian, Barbara W. Tuchman (e.g. "The Guns of August"), over the course of her long career. In my humble opinion, for the novice historian, the most interesting essays are, "The Historian as Artist" (pages 45-50), "The Historian's Opportunity", (pages 51-64). In these two essays, Ms. Tuchman challenges the budding historian to not only collect facts, dates and events, but rather to write History so the end product is as engaging as modern novel, BUT, based upon excellent scholarship. Ms. Tuchman is a proponent of "narrative" History, where the facts "...require arrangement, composition planning just like a painting - Rembrandt's 'Night Watch'" (page 49). These two essays would enhance any course in Historiography. Some of her remaining essays are a bit dated, but provide keen insight into the times, as in Tuchman's "Japan: A Clinical Note", (pages 93-97). Her essays on Israel tend to be a bit chauvinistic, in the sense that the author's objectivity slips and she can find very little wrong with the budding Jewish state in what was once Palestine. The essay, "Perdicaris Alive or Rasuli Dead" (pages 104-117), is very entertaining, particularly if you are interested in New York's Teddy Roosevelt. All in all, the first section of this book, (called "The Craft"), includes essays that should be required reading for a student beginning graduate work in History.
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Summary: By now rather dated material...
Review: By now most of these essays are beginning to show their age...I agree with the other reviewer here that her style is quaint. I was most impressed with her ruminations on the craft of creative writing itself, and how that can come into conflict w/ the practice of history, and I enjoyed her reflections on doing historical research and also her considerations on academic vs. non-academic historians, and the importance of readability and narrative vs. cramming loads of facts into one's writing w/o a unifying narrative; British scholar A.L. Rowse makes a similar point (and praises Tuchman) in his _Historians I have known_. After having read Ron David's _The Arabs & Israel_ and a number of works by Noam Chomsky (themselves both American Jewish writers) critiquing modern Israel, I really cannot take Tuchman's triumphmentalist zeal vis a vis Israel seriously; I found myself talking back to the audiobook repeatedly "but Barbara, what about...?" , etc. Tuchman is a mainstream American liberal, and I am Left of the mainstream. I have yet to read Tuchman's seminal work _The Guns of August_, and I am eager to read _The Proud Tower_ also, about the last years of the 19th century before the Great War. You could do worse than Barbara Tuchman, but she is something of an anachronism by now and you can certainly do much better, too. (Howard Zinn comes readily to mind)
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Summary: Tuchman on a smaller scale
Review: These essays allow the reader to enjoy Barbara Tuchman's incisive historical analysis and sharp wit in small doses. Most of the essays were written in the 1950s or 1960s or even earlier, but they are still fresh and pointed. Reading Tuchman is like listening to your favorite history professor. She'll tell a dramatic story and finish up with some wry observations that will keep you thinking long after.
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