The Degradation of American History

David Harlan writes in The Degradation of American History that "during the last thirty years history as ethical judgment has been driven into exile by history as contextual reconstruction." He charges that the relativistic quest for a value-free history--one that ignores what people in the past thought about their lives and times--is a false exercise in "history as objective truth." He is no kinder to postfeminist and multiculturalist schools of thought, proposing instead a kind of new traditionalism that recognizes the values that emerge from historical study. This is all fiery stuff, and sure to excite controversy among professional historians, Harlan's primary audience. Lay readers should find Harlan's book interesting, too, if for no other reason than that it draws clear lines of battle in a murky struggle.