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

~ (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, The (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: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #928,965 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!

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Intertaining, but flawed, March 14, 2005

By	Abmolyre (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

I didn't know anything about the people discussed in this book before reading it. So everything, I know about any of these situations comes from "Historians in Trouble".

Jon Wiener makes reading about plagiarism enjoyable. But, in doing so, he sacrifices credibility. With all the colorful slants, it doesn't take a high school education to figure whose side Mr. Wiener is on. While by itself this isn't a problem, combined with the fact that the portrayal of most historians in the book is so one-sided even the most naive will wonder if relevant facts are missing.

I have a couple problems with the way this book comes to its conclusion. First, it is a case study of only a dozen people. Therefore, they all could have been cherry picked. Meaning the conclusion lead the facts and not the other way around. Second, he reduced his data set from twelve to one within a couple sentences. It seems to me extrapolating on one person is pure speculation. A nice theory, but more comprehensive research is needed to determine if there is any merit to it. Finally, the Conclusion chapter is poorly organized, and throws in theories not even mentioned earlier in the book. Compared to the thoughtfulness put into the rest of the book, it was a total hack job.