I suspect Jeff Sypeck would also take issue with Lewis.Counterfactual speculations of the kind that Lewis is trading in are in any case airy and insubstantial because we lack the knowledge required to evaluate them.
I suspect Jeff Sypeck would also take issue with Lewis.Counterfactual speculations of the kind that Lewis is trading in are in any case airy and insubstantial because we lack the knowledge required to evaluate them.
Goodness knows I engage in a bit of "counterfactual speculation" in my own book, but that review hints, I think, at one of the unfortunate realities of pop-history: that these books are much easier to market when they include a provocative thesis that can be used as a bludgeon by one side or the other in the culture wars. I won't claim to be unbiased, of course, but I will claim not to have an agenda. I just want to tell a good story that reminds readers that iconic historical figures were fallible and imprescient human beings, a realization that hopefully will make those readers think more carefully before they enlist historical figures in modern political debates.
ReplyDeleteHmm--perhaps I have an agenda after all.
No, I don't think you have an agenda, Jeff. What you say is what I think historians are supposed to do: Tell us as best they can what happened in the past. The past, in fact, is not a gloss on the present, tendentious types like Lewis notwithstanding.
ReplyDelete