Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower [Paperback]

Jon Wiener (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2007

The revealing and much-discussed look behind the scenes of recent headline-grabbing controversies in the history profession.

Widely reviewed and discussed upon its hardcover publication, Historians in Trouble is investigative journalist and historian Jon Wiener's "incisive and entertaining" (New Statesman, UK) account of several of the most notorious history scandals of the last few years.

Focusing on a dozen key controversies ranging across the political spectrum and representing a wide array of charges, Wiener seeks to understand why some cases make the headlines and end careers, while others do not. He looks at the well-publicized cases of Michael Bellesiles, the historian of gun culture accused of research fraud; accused plagiarists and "celebrity historians" Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin; Pulitzer Prize-winner Joseph J. Ellis, who lied in his classroom at Mount Holyoke about having fought in Vietnam; and the allegations of misconduct by Harvard's Stephan Thernstrom and Emory's Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, who nevertheless were appointed by George W. Bush to the National Council on the Humanities.

As the Bancroft Prize-winning historian Linda Gordon wrote in Dissent, Wiener's "very readable book...reveal[s] not only scholarly misdeeds but also recent increases in threats to free debate and intellectual integrity."

Editorial Reviews

Review

A top-notch reporter on higher education, Wiener delves into the academic basket and hangs up some seriously dirty laundry. -- Chicago Tribune

As readable as any political thriller. -- Library Journal

Intrigues and educates...Wiener has a journalist's knack for boiling complex cases into digestible bits. -- Seattle Times

Make[s] the case clearly and forcefully that historians' violations of common standards of ethics are not to be taken lightly. -- Los Angeles Times

Wiener covers the modern university as if it were a police beat. -- John Leonard, Harper's

[Wiener's] argument...is persuasively mounted. -- Financial Times

About the Author

Jon Wiener is a professor of history at the University of California at Irvine and a contributing editor to The Nation. The author of several books, including Gimme Some Truth, Come Together, and Professors, Politics, and Pop, he lives in Los Angeles.

Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (April 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595581596
• ISBN-13: 978-1595581594
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #894,905 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book Marred By Some Flaws, Like a Scatched Ruby, October 24, 2005

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Historians In Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, And Politics In The Ivory Tower (Hardcover)

It seems, according to Wiener, that the most famous historians of all, Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin, were actually the worst offenders. Goodwin, a former associate of Lyndon Johnson, used passages from another woman's book, a woman who had made a specialty of the life of Kathleen Kennedy (JFK's sister who died young and beautiful). When she has nabbed (by the other woman), instead of coinfessing all she made a secret pact with the author, telling her, keep this quiet and I will give you lots of money, and do whatever else you like. The cover-up was worse than the original offense! As far as Ambrose goes, well, poor guy was probably sick when he began his career of mass plagiarizing, but Wiener suggests that the sheer number of books he signed contracts to write left him with little time to do the research himself, so he just began copying books like crazy and ladling on whatever pages he needed, thinking no one would notice. However, FORBES magazine had his number and called him on it, whereupon he said he would write no more books. Death took him away from us, he who did so much for the "Greatest Generation." I hope his "D-Day Museum" in New Orleans is okay. It stood as a tribute to Ambrose's genius and, to a lesser degree, as a reminder that if you're famous enough, you can get away with things for which a lesser historian would have had his ass handed to him.

You can see that happening again and again in Wiener's book. I like the book quite a bit, but I did notice that when a right-wing historian makes a mistake, and pays for it with his career and/or obloquy from the press, Wiener finds this right and just, but when it happens to someone like Michael Bellesiles, author of ARMING AMERICA, or to Mike Davis, author of ECOLOGY OF FEAR, he calls it a witch hunt pure and simple. I say, you can't have it both ways. And please, whatever Dino Cinel did or didn't do, how do his sexual offenses measure up to the sorts of trickery the other historians profiled in the book pull? If Cinel, the professor at CUNY who had been a priest and got booted out because he made sex tapes of himself with young men (some who looked underage, though none of this was ever proven) has committed some intellectual fraud that would be one thing, but the way Wiener cuts him up one side and down the other, not even trying to interview him as though he were such scum it would contaminate you to talk with him, well, to me it just rings of professional homophobia. After all, the only other sexual references in the book are to the sexual harassment charges brought against Elizabeth Fox-Genovese by another woman. And Wiener despises Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, I wonder why.

Happily, the book reaches a higher plateau when Wiener begins to speculate-after reviewing case after case of horrifying greed and stupidity-that perhaps something in the discipline of history itself encourages fraud-or that perhaps historians as a breed have something wrong with their moral fiber. I don't know, could be!

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A weak defense of the undefendable, May 24, 2007

By 

Michael J Edelman (Huntington Woods, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower (Paperback)

Weiner's book is not so much a survey of fraud among historians so much as it is a tu quoque defense of Michael Bellisle and others who share Weiner's particular predjudices. Yes, Doris Kearns Goodwin plagerized, as did Stephen Ambrose, and both should be (and were) condemned for that. But somehow Weiner turnes this into an argument that Bellisles, who fabricated evidence and lied in support of a false hypothesis, was unjustly pilloried. Somehow, I don't see the connection.

21 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book. Fun Read., January 17, 2005

By 

Marc Cooper "Marc" (Woodland Hills CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Historians In Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, And Politics In The Ivory Tower (Hardcover)

Disclaimer: Jon is a colleague of mine at The Nation magazine. The book is a great read, period. Jon has taken a collection of potentially stultifying subjects (mudfights among academics) and turned into a crackling, amusing and ultimately readable piece of first rate journalism. The disparate treatment handed out to different cheating or flawed historians will raise your eyebrows.. and your blood pressure. I particularly liked his account of the scandal around Doris Kearns Goodwin and the way she bought and spun her way back to legitmacy. In all, genuinely fine book on the juicy subject of academic corruption and fecklessness.