Books by Oscar Handlin

No detailed description available for "Harvard Guide to American History".

This book examines the troubled era that transformed the United States after 1920, emphasizing the conditions of life of ordinary men and women and the structures of their society, not the theories of either liberty or equality elaborated by thoughtful scholars.

Like scholars in other fields, historians have long occupied themselves in self-justification

Offers a methodological primer on how historians gather evidence, presume reliability of witnesses, and develop forms of verification in the conduct of analysis and research. It is an introduction to the study of history and an examination of specific instances in which ideology has distorted the study of American history.

A professional critique of the tendency in academic scholarship to prove worth, which becomes relevance and which in turn is interpreted as a search not for truth but political correctness. Handlin explores the social history of historians and how and why a discipline surrenders the search for truth in favour of assertions of ideological purity.