Enjoy fast, FREE delivery, exclusive deals and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery

List Price: $17.99 Details

Save: $1.00 (6%)

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Tuesday, July 11 on orders shipped by Amazon over $25. Order within 18 hrs 10 mins

Select delivery location

Only 17 left in stock (more on the way)

[{"displayPrice":"$16.99","priceAmount":16.99,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"16","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"99","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"wOD9Kp6DviuBA6WiCOT3rMH38hqitSIcZh1RzgXizpfyLMkxnb6imrjx0aeFrdPDtwaTiwpw%2Bb2q3yPxnUDUG8sR8BRmOZKS96JQ6gjjYH6TIoHIBqj9d5eo%2FN3dXxePbqp%2FUgou5Jw%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0},{"displayPrice":"$9.16","priceAmount":9.16,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"9","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"16","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"wOD9Kp6DviuBA6WiCOT3rMH38hqitSIcBaZ%2FeGD6bQ6Dz9k%2F6IuhlRmtYsnefimZVIIJzlut9Js50zzSmvjxoilSfEIr2I5jbW2nWKuurwkZEkQnLyglm%2BJvPVGvpfCArkiLLIxsPROgD6rKG9cr9FjQvuTpL3EO%2BjHSZGXSGj3sS4BeUaIWXzS4Jy2p8R1r","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}]

$$16.99 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Payment

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Details

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.

Read full return policy

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery Wednesday, July 12 on orders shipped by Amazon over $25

Select delivery location

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Ozzy's Inventory

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$15.29
& FREE Shipping

Sold by: Fifty Third Street Books

Added

Not added

$20.90
& FREE Shipping

Sold by: GrandEagleRetail

Added

Not added

$24.14
& FREE Shipping

Sold by: MyPrepbooks

Image Unavailable

Image not available for
Color:

To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the Author

David Hackett Fischer

Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought Perfect Paperback – Box set, January 1, 1970

by David Hackett Fischer (Author)

4.4 103 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Hardcover

"Please retry"

—

$11.79

Perfect Paperback, Box set

"Please retry"

$16.99

$12.14

$1.99

Purchase options and add-ons

"If one laughs when David Hackett Fischer sits down to play, one will stay to cheer. His book must be read three times: the first in anger, the srcond in laughter, the third in respect....The wisdom is expressed with a certin ruthlessness. Scarcly a major historian escapes unscathed. Ten thousand members of the AmericanHistorical Association will rush to the index and breathe a little easier to find their names absent.

Print length

338 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harper & Row, Publishers
Publication date

January 1, 1970
Dimensions

5.31 x 0.83 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0061315451
ISBN-13

978-0061315459
See all details

Frequently bought together

Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought

$16.99

Get it as soon as Tuesday, Jul 11

Only 17 left in stock (more on the way).

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Ninth Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers

$15.22

Get it as soon as Monday, Jul 10

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

+

Histories and Fallacies: Problems Faced in the Writing of History

$14.79

Get it as soon as Monday, Jul 10

In Stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.

Total price:

To see our price, add these items to your cart.

Try again!

Details

Added to Cart

Some of these items ship sooner than the others.

Show details Hide details

Choose items to buy together.

Most purchased | Highest rated | Lowest Pricein this set of products
Kate L. Turabian
3,631
Paperback
in Research Reference Books
$15.22
This item:
David Hackett Fischer
103
Perfect Paperback
$16.99
David Hackett Fischer
168
Hardcover
$25.49
Jacques Barzun
33
Hardcover
$63.65
David Hackett Fischer
1,036
Paperback
$19.91
Thomas Mann
74
Paperback
$28.95
David Hackett Fischer
110
Hardcover
$31.44
David Hackett Fischer
713
Paperback
$30.22
David Hackett Fischer
315
Paperback
53 offers from $5.36
David Hackett Fischer
41
Hardcover
$25.65
David Hackett Fischer
933
Paperback
$21.95

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An important book...in terms of helping an entire generation of scholars who profess to have lost confidence in being historians." — New York Times Book Review

"Historians are in [Fischer's] debt for reaffirming the functional values of their profession. And readers are in his debt for an extremely entertaining book." — New York Times

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper & Row, Publishers; First Edition (January 1, 1970)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Perfect Paperback ‏ : ‎ 338 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0061315451
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0061315459
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.83 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #177,212 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6 in Historical Event Literature Criticism
- #114 in History Encyclopedias

Customer Reviews:
4.4 103 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

David Hackett Fischer

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

David Hackett Fischer is University Professor and Warren Professor of History at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. The recipient of many prizes and awards for his teaching and writing, he is the author of numerous books, including Washington's Crossing, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5

103 global ratings

5 star
4 star
3 star
2 star
1 star

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Stephen Deasy

Attention all Thinkers:

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 5, 2005

Verified Purchase

I was recently introduced to the author's "Washington's Crossing." Quite impressed and informed, I read his book on Paul Revere's ride. Now I'm eating him up. Since "fallacies" was written 35 years ago, and his Washington book just recently, Professor Fischer seems to have been able to practice what he preached.

This book reminds me of Mortimor Adler's "How to Read a Book" (the original--not the van Doren amplification; or Alfred North Whitehead's "Modes of Thought" or Barbara Hernstein-Smith's "Contingencies of Value." These much read books of mine seem to be called upon, every so often, to reacquaint me with the ways of encountering an event or a process. Fischer probably could have shortened the book by combining a few of his fallacies, but his ways of seeing are myriad and his way of writing clear.

22 people found this helpful

Helpful

Omer Belsky

Fischer Gave Name to All the Fallacies

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 22, 2004

Verified Purchase

...and then some

The study of history carries with it a load of fascinating philosophical and epistemological questions. Beyond such generalities such as "what is the nature of truth?", historians have to decide which facts are relevant to the case they are studying, what are causes in history, and how to make a narrative, a book or a mathematical model, that will capture something significant of the world.

All of these are interesting questions, but except peripherally, David Hackett Fischer doesn't discuss them. Rather, Fischer tries to track down specific fallacies that historians commit, and spell them out, apparently in order to help other scholars avoid them.

"Historians' Fallacies" is basically a collection and a catalogue of errors, some well known ones, such as "the fallacy of post hoc, propter hoc" (following, therefore caused by, p. 166) or "the pathetic fallacy" (ascribing animate behavior to inanimate objects, pp. 190-193) and some as obscure as "the fallacy of indiscriminate pluralism" (enumerating multiple causes without discrimination, pp. 175-177).

There are at least three commendable aspects to Fischer's study. First, Fischer is a fine writer, with remarkable turns of phrases: "Sir Lewis [Namier] was no enemy of chosenness in either facts or people. He was, indeed, a committed Zionist in both respects." (p. 69).

Another is Fischer's willingness to name names. Too many critics prefer uses such as "many writers", etc, but although Fischer does occasionally shies away (such as in his discussion of ad hominem attacks pp.290-293), he's generally willing to openly criticize some leading historians and intellectuals. Nor does Fischer satisfy himself with attacking such usual suspects as Robert Fogel, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Arnold Toynbee; Everyone who has any interest at all in American intellectual history of the 20th century will find at least some of his or hers heroes under fire. Historians from Charles Beard to E.P. Thompson, from economist Kenneth Boulding (who was the mentor of one of my college professors) to Henry Kissinger. My favorite is the critique of Southern historian C. Vann Woodward:

"Through two revisions, the author has held his ground with a tenacity worthy of a better cause. The result is another fallacy - the overwhelming exception. We are now told that the interpretation applies to all Southern institutions except churches, schools, militia, hotels, restaurants, public buildings, jails, hospitals, asylums, gardens, and the New Orleans Opera House" (p. 149 n).

A third highpoint of the book is that it sometimes hits the bull's eye. Under "the fallacy of semantical questions", Fischer criticizes historians who focus on labels instead of content such as the 'prolonged dispute among American colonial historians over the question "Was the political structure of seventeenth-century America 'democratic' or 'Aristocratic'?"' (p.22). If you've never read studies who committed the same offence, you will not recognize the immense desire to strangle a historian who does.

But in the attempt to describe the errors of Historians, Fischer falls to the same trap that my Business courses in college fell into - they tried to make laws and regularities of something that if far too context dependant for that. So almost all the time, what you've got is specific instances of erring historians, with fallacies which say something like "don't exaggerate", "do careful research" and "use sound judgment".

When it comes to generalize, to give positive insight as how to go on a historian's business, Fischer's advice is invariably trivial, true-but-obvious. "Motives are usually pluralistic in both their number and their nature. Abraham Maslow writes, 'typically an act has more than one motive'. To this, one might add that it has motives of more than one kind." Oh really? (p. 214)

Maybe some of my criticism of Fischer's book is (as he might have said) anachronistic. Fischer objects to unnecessary jargon: "Ordinary everyday words like "simple" are replaced by monstrosities such as "simplistic" without any refinement of meaning" (p.285). Today, I doubt anyone would write about a simple solution while meaning a simplistic one, but maybe in the 1960s the distinction was not as clear.

Within the point by point critiques of Historians' errors, there seems to be an overarching thesis that remains implicit, but that guides Fischer's thought process: the inevitability of history, or the assumption that events are caused by the forces of history, rather then the actions of individuals.

Fischer calls the "fallacy of responsibility as cause", confusing the problem of agency with that of ethics (pp.182-183). If I understand him correctly, he seems to argue that individual leaders are not responsible to wide scale events: "The cause of the failure of Reconstruction race policy muse surely be sought in general phenomena for which no free and responsible human agent can be held to blame" (Ibid.). Is Fischer really saying that there was nothing that, say, Andrew Johnson or Grant could've done better? Or that it wouldn't have mattered? If he does, then he robs human beings of their abilities to change the future. That's a highly controversial (and clearly metaphysical) position, and one that clashes with his call for using history as a way to teach people rationality (pp. 316-318).

Despite its frequent wit and occasional insights, Fischer's book does not quite illuminate a path for other historians to follow. I don't think we're any closer to a logic of historical thought than we were before.

99 people found this helpful

Helpful

Jonathan

Excellent work combining both humor and logic.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 27, 2021

Verified Purchase

This book is necessary for all students of history but professors as well.
Where the mechanics of history are taught, this should be listed on the syllabus as a required text.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

ReedMathews

Even the most serious historians have lapses of logic

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 8, 2019

Verified Purchase

David Hackett Fischer gives a tour of the logical pitfalls that claim the work of the best historians. Knowing of these problems will help writers of all levels to do better work.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

J. D. Sullivan

Commendable goal, poor follow through

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 3, 2005

Verified Purchase

I used Fischer's book in my Master's thesis. I had to not only go through it with a fine-toothed comb, but I also had to look up the sources Fischer claims made fallacious arguments. Although Ficher has a praise-worthy goal for his book, he falls short of meeting this goal (L.O. Mink discusses this in great detail in his review of Fischer's book). Fischer often incorrectly attributes the label "fallacy" to some parts of texts. In order to qualify as a logical fallacy, the text *must* be making a conclusion based on evidence that does not support that conclusion. Fischer frequently labels things as fallacies that are not drawing any conclusion or even making an argument, particularly in his section on analogy fallacies.

Moreover, Fischer commits some pretty egregious errors in identifying fallacies; he mislabels a number of fallacies. In some cases, he has skewed an author's words in order to find a fallacy.

I think Fischer's book brings to light an issue in historiography that too many historians are not aware of; however, his work is riddled with errors. Hisotrians should read this text should follow on with a text on logic.

28 people found this helpful

Helpful

J. Carangal

Amazing summary of how history writers can "go wrong"

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 18, 2009

Verified Purchase

The wealth of information and examples in this book is amazing. Fischer's research and breadth of knowledge provides historians with a list of many examples and how historians might avoid to fall into the "pitfalls" made by many historians.

Some of the errors made by historians and the examples provided are a bit "over the top" and as I read about them I wondered if indeed historians really did make those "obvious" and ridiculous errors.

Overall, the book was organized logically, backed up with many specific examples, and a bit heavy to read at times.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Thomas Hagedorn

Belongs on every historians reference shelf

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 26, 2007

Verified Purchase

I have just read Fischer's work and have ordered my own copy. In my specialty I have read many works that commit many of the fallacies that Fischer describes. I am going to read this book carefully again, both to improve my work and to better understand that of others. Folks who run history graduate education programs need to attend to Fischer's concerns. Editors of scholarly journals and series need to read this again to better inform their work.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Lostinthepages

great book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 11, 2019

Verified Purchase

Any serious historian, or even the random person who likes to read history, should read this book!

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

A Keith Thompson

Delayed delivery

Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on March 21, 2021

Verified Purchase

While delivery was delayed, I was expecting no less due to COVID. But the book itself ticks all the boxes

Teddius

A great read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 17, 2016

Verified Purchase

A super book outlining how logical fallicies play themselves out in narrative.... He's an analytical historian who considers that some value can be taken from studying the past although it's not easy; To understand causality he suggests how questions are better as opposed to why questions. Why questions by their nature are more trancendental unanswerable and abstract!

Ashley Rumbold

Hilarious

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on September 24, 2021

Verified Purchase

Besides being an interesting and engaging critique of how historians approach their work, this book is suprisingly witty.

See all reviews

Amazon Music Stream millions of songs	Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers	6pm Score deals on fashion brands	AbeBooks Books, art & collectibles	ACX Audiobook Publishing Made Easy	Sell on Amazon Start a Selling Account

Amazon Business Everything For Your Business	Amazon Fresh Groceries & More Right To Your Door	AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally	Home Services Experienced Pros Happiness Guarantee	Amazon Ignite Sell your original Digital Educational Resources	Amazon Web Services Scalable Cloud Computing Services

Audible Listen to Books & Original Audio Performances	Book Depository Books With Free Delivery Worldwide	Box Office Mojo Find Movie Box Office Data	ComiXology Thousands of Digital Comics	DPReview Digital Photography	Fabric Sewing, Quilting & Knitting

Goodreads Book reviews & recommendations	IMDb Movies, TV & Celebrities	IMDbPro Get Info Entertainment Professionals Need	Kindle Direct Publishing Indie Digital & Print Publishing Made Easy	Amazon Photos Unlimited Photo Storage Free With Prime	Prime Video Direct Video Distribution Made Easy

Shopbop Designer Fashion Brands	Amazon Warehouse Great Deals on Quality Used Products	Whole Foods Market America’s Healthiest Grocery Store	Woot! Deals and Shenanigans	Zappos Shoes & Clothing	Ring Smart Home Security Systems

eero WiFi Stream 4K Video in Every Room	Blink Smart Security for Every Home	Neighbors App Real-Time Crime & Safety Alerts	Amazon Subscription Boxes Top subscription boxes – right to your door	PillPack Pharmacy Simplified	Amazon Renewed Like-new products you can trust

Amazon Prime includes:

Buy new: $16.99$16.99 FREE delivery: Tuesday, July 11 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy used: $9.16

Other Sellers on Amazon

Follow the Author

Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought Perfect Paperback – Box set, January 1, 1970

Purchase options and add-ons

Frequently bought together

What do customers buy after viewing this item?

Editorial Reviews

Review

Product details

Videos

About the author

David Hackett Fischer

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new:

$16.99

FREE delivery: Tuesday, July 11 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.

Ships from: Amazon.com

Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy used:

$9.16