Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower

Rating:
Summary: Great Book. Fun Read.
Review: Disclaimer: Jon is a colleague of mine at The Nation magazine. The book is a great read, period. Jon has taken a collection of potentially stultifying subjects (mudfights among academics) and turned into a crackling, amusing and ultimately readable piece of first rate journalism. The disparate treatment handed out to different cheating or flawed historians will raise your eyebrows.. and your blood pressure. I particularly liked his account of the scandal around Doris Kearns Goodwin and the way she bought and spun her way back to legitmacy. In all, genuinely fine book on the juicy subject of academic corruption and fecklessness.

Rating:
Summary: Fun if you don't think about it, but then it gets scary
Review: I am not an academician or an historian, so I cannot address the accuracy of this book. It provides an insider's view of some things happening within the American vocation of "historian." As a sort of intellectual voyeurism, this book is readable, engrossing, and even fun for one outside this ivory tower.

But what does it mean? What is implied about the condition of the American academy, the news business? For me, the book indicates that the Bush administration is correct--they do create their own reality. The American public is the target of the biggest propaganda machine since Joe Stalin.

I hope somebody will review this book and tear it apart the way Michael P. Johnson rendered "Designs Against Charleston: The Trial Record of the Denmark Vesey Slave Conspiracy of 1822." (See chapter 7 of "Historians in Trouble") If not, then I am afraid, very afraid.

Rating:
Summary: RIVETING, WRENCHING, AND REQUIRED READING
Review: Jon Wiener has done an enormous amount of detective work and provides us with rich research and dazzling conclusions. This tour-de-force challenges us
to rethink our comfortable assumptions about what does and does not go on
in the historical profession---

For everyone entering an archive, contemplating publication, facing a classroom, or
scratching heads in disbelief--this book should be required reading.

For anyone trying to figure out recent meltdowns and fireworks within the historical profession, Wiener's book is compelling, compact, and don't be afraid to dive into the endnotes.