Should professional historians write for the general public? If so, who is the "public" they are trying to reach? And when historians do write for the public how do they manage to make their work readable and accessible without sacrificing scholarly integrity? What role does politics, and even activism, play in popular history writing? These are questions that the historical profession, and in some respects, the nation, are currently wrestling with. Our guest today, historian Nick Witham, author of Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers, and Readers in Postwar America, reminds us that these questions are not new. Some of the country's most prominent writer-historians, including Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, John Hope Franklin, Howard Zinn, and Gerda Lerner, grappled with how to reach the public with good historical scholarship.
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Episode 124: Christian Capitalism in Early America
Episode 123: Drew Gilpin Faust on Growing-Up at Midcentury
Episode 122: The Metropolitan Sound of the American Century
Episode 121: Reagan's Evangelical Vision for America
Episode 119: How the Social Gospel Undermined Social Democracy
Episode 118: Evangelicals and the Environment
Episode 117: The Idea of Fraternity in America
Episode 116: Historical Thinking for a Democracy
Episode 115: Evangelicalism: Its Metaphors and Stories
Episode 114: How Slavery Helped Grow the American Catholic Church
Episode 113: The "Jesus Revolution"
Episode 112: The Search for God in a New York Publishing House
Episode 111: The Evangelical Battle Over the End Times
Episode 110: "How Black Ball Saved the Soul of the NBA"
Episode 109: The Voice and Faith of Sojourner Truth
Episode 108: The Life and Legacy of C. Vann Woodward
Episode 107: The Politics of Smallpox in Revolutionary America
Episode 106: Bruce Springsteen's "Long Walk Home"
Episode 105: "Heathenism" in America
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