Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower (Hardcover)

by Jon Wiener (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
As readable as any political thriller. -- Library Journal, Scott H. Silverman

Goes into court documents and behind the newspaper and network scenes to tell us about coverups, screwups, and secret settlements. -- John Leonard, Harper's Magazine, 1 January 2005

His argument that historical scandals have been hijacked by outside groups, will no real interest in historiography, is persuasively mounted. -- Financial Times

Makes the case clearly and forcefully. -- Los Angeles Times, Anthony Day

Product Description
An entertaining look behind the scenes (and headlines) of the recent controversies in the history profession.

"Some historians accused of misconduct have their careers destroyed, while others end up winning the National Humanities Medal from George W. Bush. Why is that?" —from Historians in Trouble

Historians have been in the news recently, and the news has not been good —accusations of plagiarism, research fraud, and classroom misconduct have made headlines, brought protracted investigations, and, in some cases, landed big names in the courtroom. In Historians in Trouble, investigative journalist and historian Jon Wiener examines the various history scandals of the last few years, arguing that media spectacles end careers only when powerful groups outside the profession demand punishment —and that such campaigns typically come from the right rather than the left.

Focusing on a dozen key controversies ranging across the political spectrum and representing a wide variety of charges, Wiener looks at the well-publicized cases of Michael Bellesiles, the historian of gun culture accused of research fraud; accused plagiarists Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin; Joseph 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 to the National Council on the Humanities by George W. Bush.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 260 pages
• Publisher: New Press (January 13, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565848845
• ISBN-13: 978-1565848849
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,020,601 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 25 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

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.

15 of 19 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 (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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!

19 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars an historian should know better, April 13, 2005

By	mark twain "nunya" (Columbia, SC) - See all my reviews

Professor Wiener provides a one-sided view of events which he has not sufficiently researched. Claiming to have received ground-breaking information from an anonymous source, Wiener rescues Bellisles from the right-wing conspiracy which cost him his job. Nevermind all of Bellisles's fantastic lies; forget his blatant dissmebling and the mountain of evidence that he is guilty of fraud, not just sloppy research: Jon Wiener has uncovered a right-wing plot (since when does the left defend plagiarism in the academy?). If he digs a bit deeper, perhaps he can link it back to Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. He'd obviously love to, because his chapter on her appears to be more of a personal attack rather than an indictment of her professional capabilities. All said and done, Wiener's book is a tabloid-piece on historians he doesn't like. His claims are often poorly grounded, sloppily researched (no wonder he defends Bellisles), and at best the ravings of a conspiracy theorist. He's probably cursing Charlton Heston, George Bush, and William Bennett(none of whom i admire, but a fella's gotta make a buck) for bribing me to write this review.