The Landscape Of History By John Gaddis: Book Report
Isaac McCann
Dr. Henry
Hist 698
2/11/15
Gaddis When a person thinks of a historian they would probably say they are a museum curator or someone who just studies the past. However, they truly do not understand what it means to be a historian. In the book The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, John Gaddis goes into explicit detail on what it takes for a historian to properly and accurately present the past to the public. There are three main elements that I found interesting in this explanation. They are the fact that the historian must use time, space, and scale. As such, we shall delve into this for further examination. The first topic is the use of time. When talking about the use of time it is important to know that a historian can make time “be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand….may be accurately represented on the timepiece of the mind by one second” (P. 19). With this being said, I find it important that a historian, in the telling of their specific story, must ensure that they are not boring their audience to death with every single minute detail. Meanwhile, they must also be on the lookout to make sure they are not over generalizing details when they should be more specific. We must somehow find an equal balance between the two in order to give an accurate …show more content…
presentation of the past. Secondly comes space.
Space is defined in the book “simply as the location in which events occur…” (p.31). When looking at the space it can become just as tricky as time when giving the presentation of information. Therefore, it can be suggested that the detail given to the space being studied will vary based on the historian and what they are trying to convey to the reader. As such, it would be impossible to get every last detail about the space into a book. If a historian would try to do so, they would bore the reader so bad they would fall asleep rather quickly, and their book would be so big that it would weigh too much to
carry. Finally we come to the use of scale. Scale, in this sense, is seen as being able to shift between macroscopic and microscopic at a whim (p.25). With the use of scale the historian does not necessarily have to stick with a chronological story. They can choose to present the information based upon whatever theory they wish. They can go from smallest to biggest or vice versa. Scale can be seen as giving the historian extreme flexibility, but they must make sure they do not abuse this flexibility. As presented above, John Gaddis argues that historians use time, space, and scale to their benefit. Indeed, the presentation of history, as well as the study of history, could become a very tedious chore that none would wish to undertake. I found his in-depth explanation as very intriguing and informational.
Dr. Henry
Hist 698
2/11/15
Gaddis When a person thinks of a historian they would probably say they are a museum curator or someone who just studies the past. However, they truly do not understand what it means to be a historian. In the book The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past, John Gaddis goes into explicit detail on what it takes for a historian to properly and accurately present the past to the public. There are three main elements that I found interesting in this explanation. They are the fact that the historian must use time, space, and scale. As such, we shall delve into this for further examination. The first topic is the use of time. When talking about the use of time it is important to know that a historian can make time “be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand….may be accurately represented on the timepiece of the mind by one second” (P. 19). With this being said, I find it important that a historian, in the telling of their specific story, must ensure that they are not boring their audience to death with every single minute detail. Meanwhile, they must also be on the lookout to make sure they are not over generalizing details when they should be more specific. We must somehow find an equal balance between the two in order to give an accurate …show more content…
presentation of the past. Secondly comes space.
Space is defined in the book “simply as the location in which events occur…” (p.31). When looking at the space it can become just as tricky as time when giving the presentation of information. Therefore, it can be suggested that the detail given to the space being studied will vary based on the historian and what they are trying to convey to the reader. As such, it would be impossible to get every last detail about the space into a book. If a historian would try to do so, they would bore the reader so bad they would fall asleep rather quickly, and their book would be so big that it would weigh too much to
carry. Finally we come to the use of scale. Scale, in this sense, is seen as being able to shift between macroscopic and microscopic at a whim (p.25). With the use of scale the historian does not necessarily have to stick with a chronological story. They can choose to present the information based upon whatever theory they wish. They can go from smallest to biggest or vice versa. Scale can be seen as giving the historian extreme flexibility, but they must make sure they do not abuse this flexibility. As presented above, John Gaddis argues that historians use time, space, and scale to their benefit. Indeed, the presentation of history, as well as the study of history, could become a very tedious chore that none would wish to undertake. I found his in-depth explanation as very intriguing and informational.