Customer Reviews

Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, and Fraud in the Writing of American History

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Initially I thought this book, by the distinguished University of Georgia historian Peter Charles Hoffer, would be limited to examining cases of historian inappropriate conduct, including plagiarism, falsification of data, and outright fabrication. That he does, but the book is so much more. In order to establish the context for his discussion of recent misdeeds by some prominent historians, Hoffer essentially writes a substantial history of the how the concept of history has developed in this country--i.e., a history of historic writing.

Of course, the issue has always been relative to historical writing whether there are absolute truths, or whether interpretation and bias make it impossible to write value-free analytical history. Hoffer discusses several traditions which sets the stage for his later discussion: Consensus history (things are great); the new history (much more critical, especially as to the role of slavery, women and immigration); professions of history (which developed as the discipline became more professionalized (H.B. Adams and Johns Hopkins); Progressive history ala Charles Beard; and Cold War History (Daniel Boorstin's "The Americans" Trilogy). Along the way, the author also discusses the "National History Standards" and the American Historical Association's guidelines for professional conduct and its former "Professional Division" which enforced them.

Hoffer then moves on(in the second half of the book)to looking at some prominent recent cases where inappropriate conduct was alleged: Bellesiles' book on the extent of colonial gun ownership (alleged falsification); Doris Goodwin and Steven Ambrose (alleged plagiarism); and Joseph Ellis (alleged fabrication of his Vietnam background). For the most part, Hoffer's analysis of these cases is judicious and balanced--he is, however, unduly harsh re Ellis, apparently assuming that if Ellis fabricated his Vietnam involvement, he then became a much less careful historian and exaggerated findings suggested in his research. In passing, Hoffer touches on the key problem--how historians must adjust to the lure of fame and riches in order to reach the popular history market. A whole book could easily be written on this issue alone. A very substantial introduction to a vitally important topic by an outstanding historian who has participated in several AHA ethical reviews.

Good overview of how historyhas been written since early 1900s, and where academic history is today. He pulls no punches when describing the misdeeds of Ambrose, Bellisles, Ellis, And Goodwin and their plagarism (and in the case of Bellisles, worse.) The description of academe today is depressing, though accurate--sad to say. One problem with the book is that (intentional or not) the author outlines the misdeeds of Ambrose, Bellisles, Ellis, And Goodwin and by using a guilt by association method, he implies that all non-academic/popular historians are suspect as far as method, accuracy, credentials, etc. The fact that Ambrose, Bellisles, Ellis, And Goodwin are/were ACADEMIC historians and university trained is a telling one: he offers no evidence of popular, non-academic historians plagarising and while the author hints that popular historians are only writing for celebrity reasons and telling people what they want to hear, he fails to offer the praise that David McCullough, Rick Atkinson, Jim McPherson, et al deserve for well-written books.

In some ways I prefer historiography to straight history (although I read the latter extensively), so when Past Imperfect appeared on Borders' "New Non-Fiction" table my fate was quickly sealed. Overall I enjoyed this book quite a bit. The first half in particular, where Hoffer provides an overview of American history writing from roughly the Revolution to the present, is excellent. Although I was quite familiar with the Enola Gay controversy, I discovered that I had missed the bulk of the debate over standards which occurred at roughly the same time. So I learned a lot and was entertained (Hoffer is an excellent writer). I would however, like to make a couple of observations.

1) Throughout Past Imperfect Hoffer places a great deal of emphasis on the idea that academic historians are "professionals", in contrast to the albeit skilled "amateurs" of earlier eras or creators of popular history today (Indeed, my impression is that he uses the word "professional" remarkably often). I have absolutely no dispute with the notion that historians are professionals. However, I would suggest that professionalism among historians is somewhat different than the case for say, doctors or lawyers, especially with respect to training. In their graduate programs, the latter are expected to master well defined bodies of material, whether it be human biology, legal statute, or whatever. Before they are accredited, they have to pass rigorous, standardized tests, for example, lawyers have to pass the bar exam. One might well expect to take a doctor or lawyer right out of school, and be reasonably assured that there would be a high degree of agreement across the recently mastered body of knowledge

By contrast, the training of historians is far more idiosyncratic. History graduate students are developed within a system that in some ways more resembles a medieval guild than a modern profession. The general schema being: each graduate student is paired with a single professor, who acts as a super mentor, especially while writing the dissertation. That professor's own views of history are often the single strongest influence on the early shape of a young historian's career, thus we hear that historian X studied with professor Y at university Z and this typically is a very good predictor of the style or brand of history X might subsequently practice. Moreover, the emphasis during training is frequently on *how* to approach a topic and construct an argument. As Hoffer himself notes with respect to Stephan Ambrose, rarely are dissertations fact checked.

The point I am trying to make is that within the historical profession, there often is no agreed upon body of knowledge or interpretation (and I think Hoffer makes this abundantly clear), and that this reflects and is reflected by the ways in which historians are trained and graduate programs structured, where the focus is often on the cut and thrust of scholarly debate. Something one rarely if ever hears said of doctors or lawyers. In fact, with respect to doctors, I suspect patients would be quite nervous if confronted with the wide range of interpretations and disagreements that are the norm within the historical profession.

Having rambled on about all this, I completely agree with Hoffer that there should be no dispute among historians with respect to plagiarism, falsification of research, or personal misrepresentation, which are the main topics of the second half of Past Imperfect.

2) For a book about professionalism and standards of scholarship for historians, it was odd to find the occasional typo. For example, on page 152 Bellesiles is cited as numbering his probate records at 11,170, while a page later this number has become 11,700 (I think I am correct that this is Hoffer's glitch, not Bellesiles's). Later, on page 155 Hoffer refers to the "1966 article" - isn't this supposed to be 1996? But in my view these are amusing lapses rather than fatal blunders.

Overall, an enjoyable and lucid read.

Peter Chalers Hoffer announces in the preface that he will spend the second half of his book discussing the misconduct of four renowned historians (Michael Bellesiles, Joseph Ellis, Stephen Ambrose, and Doris Kearns Goodwin). By examining their cases, he hopes to explain "how the history profession has fallen into disarray and controversy."

Hoffer undercuts his own stated intent by largely excusing the plagiarism of Doris Kearns Goodwin. Kearns, Hoffer says, made mistakes only "inadvertently and infrequently and when confronted with them tried to repair the damage. . . ." This conclusion is only half accurate. Although Kearns admitted and promised to correct her mistakes, the Los Angeles Times uncovered dozens of examples of copying in her Pulitizer Prize-winning book No Ordinary Time. One or two instances of plagiarism would arguably constitute "inadvertent" and "infrequent" copying; dozens of cases reveal a deliberate pattern.

If as Hoffer contends Kearns essentially did nothing wrong, once must wonder why he included her in a volume about misconduct. Of course, Kearns did commit academic fraud. If Hoffer wishes to expose and correct the disarray that (supposedly) currently plagues the historical profession, he should hold Kearns to the same high standard that he does Stephen Ambrose, the other notorious plagiarist in this volume.

In an effort to provide a history of historical writing, Peter Hoffer has taken an unusual approach - looking at scandals that have plagued historical scholarship in the very recent past, but comparing that against the earliest histories of our nation.

Hoffer gives the reader a good, strong understanding of the different schools of historiography (i.e. consensus history, neo-consensus, and "new" history). He then explains how the "new" history led to a rise in popular history and the conversion of four academics into the realm of popular history, which nearly destroyed all of them.

The cases of Stephen Ambrose, Michael Bellesiles, Joseph Ellis, and Doris Kearns-Goodwin all share one thing in common - they are associated with a lack of careful historical scholarship and, in some cases, outright fraud. Hoffer provides the reader with an insightful look at the sins committed by these four historians and explains why the transgressions were so significant, even if the errors made by the historian were in the classroom and not in the written text.

This is a valuable book, and one that all students of history should read. It is enjoyable and teaches us valuable lessons about how a failure to be careful can spell disaster or doom for a historians' career.

Regarding the Bellesiles affair: The Yale Law Review, The William and Mary Quarterly, Columbia University and countless other reputable sources have destroyed Bellesiles' claims. He resigned from Emory before he could be fired, his grant at the Newberry Library was revoked, his Bancroft Prize was rescinded (the first time this happened in the history of the prize) and Knopf and Assoc. Publishers stopped publication of his embarrassing attempt at false scholorship. It's very telling that the paperback issue of 'Arming America' (from a small publisher) has somehow misplaced over 8,000 sources cited in the removed Knopf version.

Back on topic, this is a pretty good book detailing how the new history book publishing mills work today.

This should have been 2 books: pages 1-139 and the rest. The descriptions of the misdeeds of the four malefactors, Bellesiles, Ambrose, Goodwin, and Ellis, don't come in detail until chapter 5. You can safely skip to chapter five and begin there. The author knows his facts and writes well, and presumably has not committed any of the deeds he describes, but this book still drags and I was glad to be done with it.

Past Imperfect is a remarkable book. It contains both an extensive commentary on recent instances of fabrication, plagiarism, and falsification by professional historians and a useful survey of the history of attempts by American historians to write about the past. Peter Hoffer, a distinguished University of Georgia historian with considerable experience in dealing with ethical issues among historians, sets out some of the reasons that it is not possible for historians to be neutral and objective and also why they are tempted to cheat. To set the stage for his examination of several recent instances of blatant misbehavior by several well-known historians, Hoffer describes the rise of professional standards that historians are presumed to follow, including the American Historical Association's guidelines for professional conduct, as well as the efforts to enforce these standards.

Hoffer describes some of the temptations to fabricate that historians face in their search for tenure, fame, and wealth. His examination of the misdeeds of some famous contemporary historians--Stephen Ambrose, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Michael Bellesiles, and Joseph Ellis--is judicious and fair, if not exhaustive. Ambrose was widely known for being what Hoffer describes as a "superb storyteller"(p. 176), evident in his acclaimed 1992 book Band of Brothers, a tale of a company of paratroopers in the 181st Airborn Division from D-day until the end of World War II. Ambrose found his career in shambles at the end of his life because of claims "that he improperly borrowed from others' works, putting his name on what was not his--what Ambrose said added up to "about 10 pages out of a total work of some 15,000 pages in print" (p. 177). Hoffer is generous in his assessment of the scholarly sins of Ambrose.

The case of Joseph Ellis should be of special interest to Latter-day Saints. Walter V. Robinson, an investigative reporter at the Boston Globe, discovered that Ellis had fabricated an entire career as an antiwar protestor and active participant in the Vietnam War in his wildly popular lectures to undergraduate students at Amherst College and Mount Holyoke. Ellis, a gifted writer, had achieved notoriety for books such as the Founding Brothers (2000), in which he sought to turn the large figures in the founding of America into human beings. He was controversial because at first he "denied Thomas Jefferson's relations with his slave Sally Hemings, then reversed himself on the issue" (p. 213). What Hoffer does not reveal is that it was also Ellis who, in an attempt to persuade voters that President Bill Clinton was just doing what others of large reputation had done previously, proclaimed there was DNA proof that Thomas Jefferson had fathered one of Hemings's children. This was not exactly what the DNA studies had shown, since the father could have been the brother of Thomas Jefferson or one of his brother's sons. Ellis clearly used his large reputation to distort the relevant DNA findings.

Hoffer demonstrates that even history done by properly credentialed, professional historians often does not and cannot reflect real events or persons. It is often not a matter of truth but of personal ambition or avarice, sometimes coupled with ideological passion and factional expediency. Even, or especially, when one encounters the essays of some obviously gifted, well-trained, professional historians, one may end up with blatant fraud and not just a difference of opinion about some complex, controversial issue. This is the conclusion of Hoffer's judicious study of forgery, fabrication, and plagiarism in the history profession.

Hoffer shows that there is no single agreed-upon body of knowledge or interpretation that students of the past are expected to command. The work of historians provides a shifting array of opinions about the past. Despite this fact, Hoffer is right in arguing that there should be no dispute with respect to plagiarism, falsification of research, or misrepresentation of sources. Even more disconcerting is the discovery that books are published and then lauded that lack careful historical scholarship and, in some cases, involve fraud. Hoffer attempts to explain why the scholarly sins of the prominent figures he examines are important even if the errors were, as was the case with Ellis, in lectures to students rather than in books. Such wrongdoing is deplorable. Latter-day Saints are constantly faced with it on the margins and outside the circle of faith, and sometimes from within.

To see the sour fruit of such misconduct, one only has to glance at Charles L. Wood's The Mormon Conspiracy: A Review of Present Day and Historical Conspiracies to Mormonize America and the World (2001), Grant H. Palmer's An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (2002), Richard Abanes's One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church (2002), Matthew A. Paulson's Breaking the Mormon Code: A Critique of Mormon Scholarship Regarding Classical Christian Theology and the Book of Mormon (2006), or several recent books on the Mountain Meadows Massacre by agitated critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Saints are increasingly confronted by such shameful potboilers; they must also learn not to test their faith against the shifting sands of historical fads and fashions.

I would only recommend this book to people who a really interested in not just history, but the profession of historian. This book basically asks what is the role of the American historian, and how has it changed over time. What does the historian owe to his/her readers? Past Imperfect discusses the failings of Ambrose, Bellisles, Ellis, and Goodwin, and the relatively nonchalant reaction of the public. As an aspiring historian, it is nice to hear someone championing integrity over book sales, and this book asks serious philosophical questions that I think all historians need to ask themselves. It wasn't particularly exciting or engaging, but I felt I got a lot out of it.

A professor of historical writing at the University of Georgia at Athens, the author of several books of academic history, wrote this book for non-historians. He surveyed history readers on Amazon.com which showed him that the accusations of misconduct against the four writers as explained in this volume made no difference, as they look on it as "entertainment," where fabricating and borrowing are now the norm and just taken for granted.

History by today's writers reflect only the image, not the real events or persons. It's all a matter of taste, not truth. There are no immutable facts and there never will be, for each interest group and each generation will make up its own facts. The new history "excludes" important factual happenings as they would detract from the way the writer has decided to invent or re-invent the occurrences as entertaining tales. He calls this "two-faced" history; it is like the cover of this book, a facade instead of the whole thing, only part of the truth.

Stephen Ambrose was charged with plagiarism and yet his books are still available. He died in 2002. Popular history will always sell, even when its authors have been proven to be cheats. Ambrose's versions of the Lewis & Clark expedition has many false statements. Lewis did not commit suicide, as he so nonchalantly stated. His version of the Transcontinental Railroad is not above reproach, either.

Michael Bellesiles has out a new edition of ARMING AMERICA (a popular theme these days) with material, he asserts. which may be invalid. He was accused of falsifying his research and credentials. Joseph Ellis, a reviewer at New York Times Book Review, was accused of fabricating material and has written a biography of George Washington and about our Founding Fathers from his own viewpoint, and not the facts.

Doris K. Goodwin has just now released a new biography on Abraham Lincoln, as have other history writers. He's a hot topic these days. She was accused of plagiarism (borrowing material from others without giving credit) in 2002.

If you want to read real history, look for those bothersome footnotes and bibliography the academics and scholars use. This distortion of our past is a travesty as the next generation will be relying on falsehoods and never know the truth of the matter.