April 2002 » Historically Speaking be aware ofhow junk food can feed and even satisfyappetites. I am not, fora moment, arguing for die abolition ofthe Ph.D., or ofprofessional or even "merely" academic historianship . I often think that the main task of academic historians, now and in die future, is to recognize and describe and point outtwistings and falsifications and other mistakes and shortcomings in this or diatkind ofhistorical representation. But diat kind ofeffort must be more than academic snobbery, more than a resultofconscious (orunconscious) envy, more man a suggestive assertion thathistorical truth is a matter for professional historians, their restricted province. What we must recognize is mat die purpose ofhistory is the reduction ofuntrudi. And is it not at least possible diat the present appetite ofall kinds ofpeople for history may be largely due to dieir, perhaps hardly conscious, dissatisfaction widi die large and heavyclouds ofuntruths hangingover die world, affecting our very lives in this age of mass democracy, ofa—so-called—"Information Age"? John Lukacsslatestbook isAt die End ofan Age (Yale University Press, 2002). John Wilson The Decline of Popular History? Sean Wilentz's essay-review, "America Made Easy,"1 calls to mind a favorite plot device in die sitcoms ofdie 1950s. The husbandwants to do somediing—go fishingwidjihis ,Jiext-doorneighbor, maybe, nothing nefarious, nothing illicit, but for one reason or another he can'tsimply tell his wife that he is going fishing. So he invents a pretext for die trip: he's going to visit his cousin, Elmer. Cousin Elmer? The wife doesn't remember any such person—and for good reason: he doesn't exist And anyway, what's die urgency? I dioughtyouwere going to clean die gutters this weekend. Clearly the story needs to be embellished further. Cousin Elmer, it turns out, is on his deathbed ___ And so on and so on, as an ever-more fantastic edifice is constructed , until it all comes crashing down. Sean Wilentz wants to go fishing. He is reviewing David McCullough's biography of John Adams, but his real subject is larger. Wilentzwants history that will "rattle its readers , not . . . confirm them in their received myths and platitudes aboutAmerica." He wants historians with a "taste for ambiguity." Fair enough. On these counts, McCullough is tried and found wanting. His "vivid and smooth prose" goes down all too easily, and his "obsession " with the personal character ofhis subjects (Truman, TeddyRoosevelt, Adams) diverts attention from what really matters. There's plenty of material here to fuel a usefully provocative essay. Is McCullough as breezily complacent as Wilentz suggests? Is character more important than he allows? HowshouldAmerica's storybe told, and howis itbeingtold? Pointusin die direction ofbooks that offer something more than "America made easy," history that comes up against the resistance ofthe real, history that gives us a richerand truerunderstandingofthe making ofAmericans. It's a marvelous subject, but having raised it Wilentz proceeds to evade and obscure it. He constructs a grand narrative—die decline of popular history, with McCullough as admonitory example—that in turn compels him to construct assorted side-narratives, such as "a renewed rage forhistorical fiction,"which "has produced what amounts to a fresh round of costume-drama Americana." And like the tale spun by the hapless sitcom husband, Wilentz's ramshackle argument grows ever more flimsy the more he adds to it. McCullough , the Civil War according to Ken Burns, "Simon Schama's erudite and jolly and empty traversais through everything from a 19th-century murder mystery in Boston to the history ofBritain since 3500 B.C."—all symptoms of the same decline, "popular history as passive nostalgic spectacle." But wait a minute. What or where did we decline from? And how did ithappen? Wilentz answers die second question first. The kitsch we're wallowingin can largelybe explained as a "reaction againstdie new departure, the new stringency" with which Richard Hofstadter and his generation of historians reassessed American history. Giants walked the earth in those days: "From the 1950s through the 1980s, American historians devoted themselves to a remorseless re-examination ofthe nation's past." It was, in C. Vann Woodward^ phrase, "the age ofinterpretation." Alas, "overdie last decade orso,"whatwas once bold revisionism became die...