The Purpose of the Past, (Paperback)

from datrappert

This collection of Wood's reviews, with added afterthoughts, is a good survey of the state of American history writing over the past 30 years or so. Wood finds fault with pretty much every book, but his explanations usually make sense. It is refreshing to see inaccuracies pointed out, and it give...

from bezoar44

This 2008 collection includes book reviews originally published in the New York Review of Books and the New Republic between 1981 and 2007 (most between 1995 and 2000). Gordon Wood is a highly respected historian of colonial and Revolutionary America, and most of the books reviewed focus on that ...

from keylawk

For our generation, Wood is the prize-winning dean of American historiography. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (1969) won the Bancroft Prize. The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991) won the Pulitzer. Collection of long-form praise and criticism of works by American histo...

from Othemts

This is a collection of book reviews written by the esteemed historian Gordon S. Wood. Many of them criticize history writers for presentism, post-modernism, political history, and scientific quantitative analysis. Coming under Wood's scrutiny are authors I admire such as Gary Wills, Barbara Tuch...

from HistReader

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of book reviews spanning almost three whole decades; Gordon S. Wood is quickly becoming my favorite historian. Being uninitiated to literary criticism in the magazine length format as these essays are, I am unsure if his critiques of historical offerings from ...