Nearby History: Exploring the Past Around You (American Association for State and Local History Book Series) [Paperback]

David E. Kyvig (Author), Myron A. Marty (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0742502716 | ISBN-13: 978-0742502710 | Edition: 2

In the Second Edition of Nearby History, the authors have updated all chapters, introduced information about internet sources and uses of newer technologies, as well as updated the appendices. A comprehensive handbook on investigating the history of your community, family, local institutions, and cultural artifacts, Nearby History guides you in researching the world close at hand. Nearby History provides insights on how to find and use published, unpublished, visual, and material records while also instructing on how to collect information through interviews, connect individual investigations with broader historical issues, and use photographs, documents, and objects in a study. Both professionally trained and self-taught historians will find this work an excellent resource in developing a more comprehensive view of the past. Individual books on Nearby History topics are also available as a part of The Nearby History Series.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Regardless of career path or historical interest, readers...will find in Nearby History useful material to guide their inquiries and illuminate their research. It should find a place on every scholar's and historical society's reference bookshelf. (Porter, Kimberly K. The Annals Of Iowa )

David Kyvig and Myron Marty have issued a second edition of their fine introduction to the study of 'nearby history' that takes account of new developments in computer technology, desktop publishing, and the Internet. [They] use the concept of nearby history to argue forcefully that local historical concerns are always linked to larger historical issues and to the essence of public history. They then offer an eminently readable tour of basic historical research methodology. Their presentation is so sensitive to both practical and historiographical concerns that doctoral students, as well as amateur local history sleuths, will benefit from reading this book. (David A. Zonderman The North Carolina Historical Review )

Highly professional.... Kyvig and Marty provide an excellent discussion of the reasons for and methods of collecting and analyzing this 'nearby history' .... By reading Nearby History and following its suggestions, researchers will find sources that help to place forebears in their world. (Debra L. Wiley National Genealogical Society Quarterly )

I am hardly a disinterested reviewer of Nearby History; the book's first edition changed my life, and I've written fan mail to its authors.... The new edition... includ[es] a brighter graphical design and cleaner reproduction of well-chosen photographs and documents, a number of them new.... The text has been polished and updated, including a useful new section on copyright... From the book's opening... to the conclusion's deep understanding of history-doing as a basic human need, Nearby History is a gentle, powerful manifesto.... The most comprehensive manual for doing history from scratch, Nearby History also identifies the potential of the nearby past to offer striking insight into the most significant historical topics. (Lorraine C. McConaghy Oregon Historical Quarterly )

Nearby History shows that any literate person can master historical research techniques. Each chapter describes methods for collecting and using evidence from a person's nearby world—written documents, oral testimony, visual objects, buildings, photographs, physical landscapes—for historical studies of families, neighborhoods, institutions, and communities as a whole. After presenting the case for doing nearby history, the authors offer suggestions for possible subjects for such study. In the last chapter, they show how each unique community, local institution, physical structure, and family is linked to a universal sharing of origin, motivation, design, and behavior. Of particular value are the several appendixes: forms to request information from federal agencies, such as veterans records, passenger ship arrival data, census records, and land entry files; sample gift agreements, including historical materials and oral history agreements; sources of archival storage products and information; and uses of the Web for doing nearby history. In summary, this book is a 'must have' for any person seeking to master the methodology for capturing local history. (R. E. Marcello CHOICE )

Packed with guidance, information, and sources of help, this handbook is a useful resource for local historians. (Utah Historical Quarterly )

Nearby History, Second Edition retains the goals established in the first edition—to make local history research thorough and meaningful. And it follows the format of the series—if it ain't broke, don't fix it....The authors decided on a minimalist approach. Kyvig and Marty recognized the need to incorporate the feedback from readers that praised Nearby History for being useful and stimulating....Kyvig and Marty recognized the need to incorporate the findings from nearly two decades of work by local historians into their bibliographic sources. This includes important new material related to oral history, motion pictures, and material culture as evidence, and new electronic resources published as CDs and on the internet. (Journal Of The Illinois Historical Society )

Nearby History held up well and remains a practical and useful book; revision, which reflects some significant developments in scholarship and sources (i.e. technology), should make it an even more valuable resource for a new generation of twenty-first-century historians. (Kansas History, Vol 24.2, Summer 2001 )

About the Author

David E. Kyvig, professor of history at Northern Illinois University, and Myron A. Marty, professor of history at Drake University, are, respectively, the editor and consulting editor of the ongoing AASLH Nearby History Series. They previously collaborated on "Your Family History: A Handbook for Research and Writing."

Product Details

• Paperback: 285 pages
• Publisher: Altamira Press; 2 edition (September 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0742502716
• ISBN-13: 978-0742502710
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #829,383 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More introspection into common items, November 5, 2004

By 

Ranger Reub (Cedar City, UT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nearby history: Exploring the past around you (Hardcover)

Keeping a diary is a commendable and worthwhile pursuit if its content forms a cohesive, relevant history that future generations can appreciate. However, if one treats "daily jottings as cheap therapy," the record created prevails only for the gain of one person, not progeny (48). Readers of Kyvig and Marty's Nearby History will never look at journal writing the same, and more importantly, they will not see ordinary things within close proximity as ordinary anymore.

In Nearby History, "the commonplace becomes the mystifying" (129). Kyvig and Marty succeed in making everyday items such as manhole covers and fire hydrants exciting, saying that a look at the materials used in their design, their function, the materials used in their construction, etc. tell a lot about the history of their locale (172-173). The volume shows that fast food restaurants anywhere can be excellent barometers of change over time (168). The authors suggest that something as boring as a tax form can be a useful historical trace (57). Nearby History teaches that seemingly mundane objects, upon critical introspection, can become a treasure trove of historical information. For instance, in the caption of a photograph of a small schoolhouse, the authors ask, "What does the physical appearance of a school suggest about the nature of the educational experience?" (31). Questions that should be posed when examining the facets of local history - family, religion, culture, etc. - abound in the volume. The answers to the book's questions can lead anyone on a more successful journey into the past.

To make trips into the past more rewarding, one cannot simply look at surviving written traces. Nearby History shows the importance of examining artifacts and their potential to add needed depth to the historical record. Words and pictures are abstractions - ideas conceived in the mind - while artifacts prove concrete (149). Artifacts are "silent carriers of vast amounts of information about the past (149). Material culture, the book explains, has been especially useful in uncovering women's history, since many women did not leave written records. Artifacts demonstrate how earlier generations solved daily problems and provide insights into tastes, customs, manners, and styles of living (156).

Through its handling of everyday items as historical records unto themselves, Nearby History can be treated as the practical guide to becoming an amateur historian. Its introduction argues that the emotional rewards of learning about a past affecting one's own life cannot be duplicated (12). However, its conclusion stresses that local history should be put into better context by comparing it to similar phenomena elsewhere, saying "the historian who wishes to understand a topic never regards it as existing in a vacuum" (217). Such an inference reiterates the book's strength - its continuing lesson that observing any item at face value yields practically nothing while continually asking questions produces an abundance of useful information.

The book's main weakness is easy to spot. It is astoundingly outdated. Much of the technology it suggests one use while doing research, especially in the collection of oral evidence, does not exist anymore or is rarely used. An updated edition would be welcome to better serve as a guide for historians, both amateur and academic, in their discovery of the vast array of stories told close at hand.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thumbs Up for Nearby History, February 28, 2008

By 

Stephen G. Townsend "tactown" (Las Vegas, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nearby History: Exploring the Past Around You (American Association for State and Local History Book Series) (Paperback)

I just finished reading Nearby History and would recommend this book for any aspiring local historian. This is a great source book, not only thought provoking, but also full of useful references and internet sites.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nearby History (2nd edition), August 21, 2001

By 

D (TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nearby History: Exploring the Past Around You (American Association for State and Local History Book Series) (Paperback)

I found that "Nearby History" (2nd edition) was actually quite an informative book. I was looking for something in particular about my family, and I was at a complete loss as to how to find it. I haven't found it yet, but thanks to this book, I have made progress. I thought it'd be just for historians.