Historians Against History

The Frontier Thesis and the National Covenant in American Historical Writing Since 1830

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Author:

David W. Noble

“This is not a traditional historiographical essay but an intellectual history in which historians play a crucial role . . . Certainly this is an important, challenging book.”

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Times Literary Supplement

Professor Noble examines the basic philosophy and writing of six American historians, George Bancroft, Frederick Jacksion, Charles A. Beard, Carl Becker, Vernon Louis Parrington, and Daniel Boorstin, and finds in them a common tradition which he calls anit-historical. He argues that this viewpoint is founded in the frontier interpretation of American history, that American historians have served as the chief political theorists and theologians of this country since 1830, and that their writings can be interpreted as Jeremiads designed to preserve a national covenant with nature.

David W. Noble is a professor of history at the University of Minnesota and is also the author of The Paradox of Progressive Thought, published by the University of Minnesota Press.

“This is not a traditional historiographical essay but an intellectual history in which historians play a crucial role . . . Certainly this is an important, challenging book.”

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Times Literary Supplement

“A carefully constructed study, by a respected historian of ideas, of an important problem in American historical writing.”

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Choice: Books for College Libraries