Recovering the Past A Historian’s Memoir Forrest McDonald May 2004 200 pages, 20 photographs, 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 Cloth ISBN 978-0-7006-1329-8, $24.95 (t) Forrest McDonald is a legend in his own time. The NEH’s sixteenth Jefferson Lecturer, he is one of our most eminent historians and the author of numerous provocative works on the early American republic, the Constitution, and the American presidency. Renowned for his sly wit and iconoclasm, he is also a conservative in a mostly liberal profession, a man who believes that his discipline has been subverted by those who serve public policy agendas. He now candidly recounts and reconsiders his own career, mixing in equal measure autobiography with a sharp critique of the historical craft. Beginning in 1949, McDonald has traversed a sometimes rocky academic road from Brown University to Wayne State and finally the University of Alabama. He rose to prominence by arguing against the popular histories of Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles Beard, and his rebuttal of the latter was published as his seminal book We the People. Recovering the Past carries forward this critical tradition with McDonald’s pointed comments on fellow historians from Kenneth Stampp to William Appleton Williams, his admiration for Oscar Handlin’s book Truth in History, and his distaste for the revisionism of the New Left historians who depict the American story as an epic of oppression. “The norm is to write for one’s fellow historians,” he says, “but that seems to me to be wrong-headed and to result in stultifying reading. I have chosen, instead, to write for that elusive critter called the general reader, or, more precisely, for the vast number of people who genuinely love history for its own sake--which, as will become evident, I regard as eliminating a sizable majority of professional historians.” As McDonald observes, thinking historically facilitates our knowing who and where we are, and the reward of studying the past comes when one realizes how its many parts fit together. As the pieces of his own past fall together, they form a story that will engross, inform, and even gall readers seeking an inside look behind the ivied walls of academe. Recovering the Past offers an eye-opening look at one man and his discipline; more than that, it is a manifesto for those who truly care about history. “This book is as engaging as it is provocative. McDonald’s autobiographical one-man tour through the major battles of twentieth-century American historiography is hard to put down.”--Pauline Maier, author of American Scripture “When a first-rate historian reflects on his life and work with candor and wisdom, other historians will want to read it. But McDonald has written a book that anyone who cares about education, or is just in the mood for a witty romp through the vicissitudes of academia, will enjoy and profit from.”--Eugene D. Genovese, author of The Southern Tradition “A delightful and informative account that captures the sense of intellectual adventure that drew McDonald to the life of a historian, as well as his thoughtful reactions to the controversies that have plagued the profession in recent years.” --Diane Ravitch, author of The Language Police FORREST McDONALD is Distinguished University Research Professor emeritus at the University of Alabama. His previous books include Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution; The American Presidency: An Intellectual History; and States’ Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperio, 1776–1876. Home | About the Press | Recent Awards | Contact Us | Order New Books: | By Author | By Subject | By Title | By Series Books in Print: | By Author | By Subject | By Title | By Series ©2007 University Press of Kansas 2502 Westbrooke Circle, Lawrence, KS 66045-4444 Phone (785) 864-4155; Fax (785) 864-4586