RSS Feed MenuLaura Kalman has penned a new history of the late 1970s, Right Star Rising, which I reviewed for The New York Times.
Art historians tell us that photography revolutionized painting. Suddenly there was a better way of recording the physical appearance of things, and artists had to discover new purposes for brush and pigment. But for those living through the revolution, the process must have seemed more gradual. Long after the Impressionists and Cubists and Futurists, there must have been serious portraitists who continued to earn a living depicting brides on their wedding day or businessmen made good.
I kept thinking of those backward-looking artists all the way through Laura Kalman’s Right Star Rising. As a work of history about the Ford and Carter years, there is nothing seriously wrong with it. The facts are accurate, the writing is clear and the point of view is not tendentious. Once upon a time, such a book might have been useful to somebody.
But the question it raises — and it’s not a question about this book alone — is: What’s the point of this kind of history in the age of the Internet? Suppose I’m an undergraduate who stumbles for the first time across the phrase “Proposition 13.” I could, if I were minded, walk over to the university library, pull this book from the shelf and flip to the index. Or I could save myself two hours and Google it. I wouldn’t learn more from a Google search than I’d learn in these pages. But I wouldn’t learn a whole lot less either.
Click here to read the rest.
sinz54 // Sep 5, 2010 at 11:44 am
First of all, you can’t dig everything out of the Internet.
A good historian, when researching fairly recent events like the 1970s, can interview some of the survivors himself and learn new things.
Even when researching remote events, a good historian can dig out letters, paintings, archeological artifacts that aren’t on the Internet (yet). He can go to these places and learn for himself.
And that’s the most important thing you can get from a history book: The historian’s judgment and analysis.
OtisNixon // Sep 5, 2010 at 12:00 pm
You are much, much too kind to her in this review. Most of the anecdotes in the early part of the book come directly from Yanek Mieczkowski’s “Gerald Ford And The Challenges Of The 1970s” (U of Kentucky Press, 2005). Klaman cites him appropriately (and thanks him profusely in the acknowledgments), so there is nothing out of bounds here. It is just incredibly lazy, especially give the fact that she spent time at the Ford Library.
It seems to me, also, that most of her arguments fail to hold water. The idea of a “short 1970s” doesn’t hold up very well and the assertion (implicit in the late chapters) that Reagan’s victory in 1980 was not a true victory for the Right is fairly silly on its face.
LegalHistoryBlog // Sep 5, 2010 at 12:09 pm
Frum’s review is more about the value of books than it is about Kalman’s own book. My reaction to Frum, and links to other reviews, are on the Legal History Blog: http://legalhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/reviewed-kalman-right-star-rising.html
JeninCT // Sep 5, 2010 at 2:30 pm
sinz54 wrote:
“First of all, you can’t dig everything out of the Internet.
A good historian, when researching fairly recent events like the 1970s, can interview some of the survivors himself and learn new things.”
I think that’s Frum’s point about the book. Nothing that can’t be found on the net.
Has anyone read Frum’s book about the 70’s? I just noticed the reference to it in the Times.
sinz54 // Sep 5, 2010 at 4:06 pm
JeninCT:
Frum’s point was:
“But the question it raises — and it’s not a question about this book alone — is: What’s the point of this kind of history in the age of the Internet? ”
And Frum is wrong.
The Internet hasn’t made the job of the historian obsolete.
Just like WebMD.com hasn’t made the job of your doctor obsolete.
torourke // Sep 5, 2010 at 4:31 pm
JeninCT,
Yes, and it is quite good.
sunroof // Sep 6, 2010 at 11:11 am
Having just read Conrad Black’s excellent 1200-page biography of FDR, I can’t imagine finding a perspective as informative or a work so thorough online. I can’t even imagine reading that book in digital form since I often flipped back and forth by hundreds of pages to review material I had read a few days earlier. Oh, I borrowed it from the municipal library.
The Internet is a fantastic body of references, and Google is its God, but it doesn’t always satisfy. Sometimes, the mind requires more than digital version of a Pop Tart.
elizajane // Sep 6, 2010 at 6:05 pm
These articles that are just meant to be provocative annoy me. At least I hope that is the case here.
A bad book is a bad book. It is not an argument about books in general. Even a bad book serves a completely different purpose than the Internet, as an Impressionist painting serves a different purpose than a daguerotype. (Don’t know how to spell that one).
The internet provides you with snippets of information, often of dubious quality. It does not provide sustained arguments or analysis. Even if you bother to find internet articles that provide sources and references, which usually isn’t the case, you aren’t getting any kind of synthesis. An evening wasted with Glen Beck should demonstrate what happens when you take snippets of dubious information that are not sourced and have not been interconnected and synthesized, and do whatever the heck you want with them. You wind up with ignorant nonsense.
The analogy you are looking for is perhaps between the encyclopedia and the Internet. Printed encyclopedias are out of date because they do little that cannot be done as well or better by Wikipedia. But it is just plain wrong to say that we no longer need considered, sustained analysis of large historical, political, and social problems because undergraduates can now google any information they need. Serious books are not (only) about “information.” If you honestly think that they are, then I don’t understand why the N.Y.Times is having you review for them.