A Profession of Many Parts

Abstract

This book makes an obvious but significant point: the American historical profession has become very complex. book emphasizes the profession's intellectual complexity, dealing chiefly with the expansion of old specialties and the proliferation of new specialties and of new methods. profession's many parts are a strength. This condition also poses a problem (What are the reasons for the change?) and presents a challenge (How do we bring the many parts together into new syntheses?). book stresses strengths, has less to say about the problem, and does not say enough about the challenge. editor and authors, furthermore, are not sufficiently interested in one of the most energetic parts of the contemporary profession--public history. Several of the authors-Karl E Morrison, William J. Bouwsma, William H. McNeil, and Charles Gibson-explore the expansion of long-established specialties in the American historical profession: medieval history, early modern Europe, modern Europe, and Latin America. study of Latin American history, for example, has a long tradition in the United States. It runs back to William H. Prescott, and was well-established in academic life before World War II. The study and writing of modern Euro-