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


by Jon Wiener

List Price: $15.95
Price: $10.85
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Sales Rank: 76196
Studio: New Press
Binding: Paperback
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: April 02, 2007
Publisher: New Press


EDITORIAL REVIEWS

Product Description
The revealing and much-discussed look behind the scenes of recent headline-grabbing controversies in the history profession.

Widely reviewed and discussed upon its hardcover publication, Historians in Trouble is investigative journalist and historian Jon Wiener's "incisive and entertaining" (New Statesman, UK) account of several of the most notorious history scandals of the last few years.

Focusing on a dozen key controversies ranging across the political spectrum and representing a wide array of charges, Wiener seeks to understand why some cases make the headlines and end careers, while others do not. He looks at the well-publicized cases of Michael Bellesiles, the historian of gun culture accused of research fraud; accused plagiarists and "celebrity historians" Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin; Pulitzer Prize-winner Joseph J. 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 by George W. Bush to the National Council on the Humanities.

As the Bancroft Prize-winning historian Linda Gordon wrote in Dissent, Wiener's "very readable book...reveal[s] not only scholarly misdeeds but also recent increases in threats to free debate and intellectual integrity."


CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.0 based on 9 reviews)

The Chilling of Historiography  
Wiener's book does not attempt to settle the scholarly controversies which it describes. It was written to inform us of actions taken against historians who incur the wrath of the political Right. He concedes the work of these historians was flawed: but the point is that the tactics used against them, so as to discredit their work, or even drive them from the profession, smack of totalitarianism. For contrast, he shows us rightist historians who violated fundamental rules of careful scholarship and got a slap on the wrist, followed by a reward from the White House.

A very disturbing book. Prospective historians will read it and perhaps chose a less hazardous discipline---to everyone's loss.
January 16, 2008

Ultimately Disappointing  
The treatment given the subject of plagiarism and fraud in historical studies deserves a more thorough treatment than given by Mr Wiener. In the episodes I have some familiarity with, those of Bellesiles and the Vesey conspiracy, Mr Wiener protests the outcome using using the same idealogical approach as he decries in the original participants in the exposure of the fraud, i.e., he does not give a complete presentation of the evidence. On the other hand, it is somehow comforting to know that the professorial ranks are subject to the same petty jealousies that everyone else experiences in everyday life, and the descriptions of the Goodwin and Ambrose cases are entertaining.
July 29, 2007

A weak defense of the undefendable  
Weiner's book is not so much a survey of fraud among historians so much as it is a tu quoque defense of Michael Bellisle and others who share Weiner's particular predjudices. Yes, Doris Kearns Goodwin plagerized, as did Stephen Ambrose, and both should be (and were) condemned for that. But somehow Weiner turnes this into an argument that Bellisles, who fabricated evidence and lied in support of a false hypothesis, was unjustly pilloried. Somehow, I don't see the connection.
May 24, 2007

Excellent Book Marred By Some Flaws, Like a Scatched Ruby  
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!
October 24, 2005

an historian should know better  
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.
April 14, 2005


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