![]() Too many historians, it seemed to me, accepted as a priority the “telling of stories” rather than the answering of questions. While I was most certainly in thrall to “the historian’s sense of fact,” of which we are so justifiably proud, it did seem to me that historians could learn some things from the philosophers and literary scholars about how to focus on a question and answer it as best one could on the basis of evidence. Quine and Lionel Trilling that I thought refreshing because of their analytic style. Once I switched to the modern period, I found myself even as a graduate student reading essays by philosophers and literary scholars such as W. Miller, great historian that he was, may have allowed his English Department culture to get the better of him at that point. Indeed that is why, in later years when I reprinted essays of my own in four volumes frankly modeled on Errand into the Wilderness, I reprinted the footnotes written for the versions of each essay that had first appeared as a peer-reviewed article, as Miller did not. On the opening page of his preface Miller explains to readers that each essay is an “argument.” I did not accept then, nor have I since, the distinction Miller drew between arguments and “monographs.” The later, I knew full well from my experience as an ersatz medievalist, were often arguments. Errand into the Wilderness was a collection of exactly such pieces. Miller’s The New England Mind I certainly found inspiring and informative, but what most affected me was Miller’s practice of the evidence-based analytic essay. Perry Miller was the figure in the field of American history of any period who seemed to me the most like a medievalist. I generally found that the closer one got to the present, the scholarship became less rigorous and the writing more casual. The more of a modernist I became, the more intrigued I was by Miller and the more entranced by the speculation as to what pragmatism, for example, might look like if it were a topic addressed by someone trained as a medievalist (I eventually tried my hand at exactly such an essay, pointedly entitled “The Problem of Pragmatism in American History”). Although I first read Miller while expecting to specialize in 18 th century American history, I read for exams in the modern period, too, and soon switched to the 20 th century as my own specialty. I knew I did not want to switch from American to medieval history, but I did feel that the medievalists were comfortable with a more austere analytic style than what I discerned in the bulk of specialists in American history, especially in the more recent periods. The articles I read in Speculum and English Historical Review seemed to me more sophisticated and focused than the ones I read in Mississippi Valley Historical Review and later in Journal of American History. Medievalists kept talking about “advanced problems” in the field, a language I don’t recall ever hearing in a US history seminar. As a graduate student in American history with a minor in medieval England, I was struck with how vastly different were the styles of history in these two fields as registered, at least, by the books and articles I was expected to read. I came to appreciate Perry Miller’s Errand into the Wilderness while trying to imagine what 20 th century US history might look like if it were written by a medievalist. Classics Series Editor, Lilian Calles Barger. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did bringing it together. My hope is that the classics series will provide a fresh reading of some of the books that have influenced our field and insight into the development of historical thinking. ![]() ![]() The results will be seen in the coming months as each writer takes a unique approach from the personal to the historiographical. When I asked senior scholars to name a book that had shaped their thinking often times it wasn’t on the list, or even U.S. We began with a list compiled by the book review committee a list fit for a field examination. The series is motivated by the desire to put our current work in the context of what has stood the test of time. Our “Classic Series” of retrospective reviews and reflections provides an opportunity to invite senior scholars and others to take a look back at books that have either endured, or had particular significant in their intellectual growth. ![]()
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