book review the landscape of history

• All Articles
• Books & Reviews
• Anthologies
• Audio Content
• Author Directory
• This Day in History
• War in Ukraine
• Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• Artificial Intelligence
• Climate Change
• Biden Administration
• Geopolitics
• Benjamin Netanyahu
• Vladimir Putin
• Volodymyr Zelensky
• Nationalism
• Authoritarianism
• Propaganda & Disinformation
• West Africa
• North Korea
• Middle East
• United States
• View All Regions

Article Types

• Capsule Reviews
• Review Essays
• Ask the Experts
• Reading Lists
• Newsletters
• Customer Service
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Subscriber Resources
• Group Subscriptions
• Gift a Subscription

Browse book reviews by:

• Magazine Issue

The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past

Reviewed by g. john ikenberry, by john lewis gaddis.

A masterful statement on the historical method by a distinguished Cold War historian. Gaddis makes the case that the past may not be prologue, but it can be explored for lessons to guide human action. Historical knowledge provides the most important way in which society transmits acquired skills and ideas from one generation to the next. Gaddis depicts the historian's craft as akin to cartography -- an open-ended process that requires faithfulness to detail, multiple points of view, and a constant eye on the horizon. The past is not unknowable, but neither is it a simple data bank that allows social scientists to derive and test abstract universal laws. Gaddis' most provocative claim is a powerful irony: Social science, with its independent variables and deductive theories, would appear to have more scientific pretensions than does history. But the historical method, which relies on thought experiments and the interplay of inductive and deductive reasoning, more fully shares the methodical logic of such fields as astronomy, paleontology, and evolutionary biology. Gaddis' characterization of the social sciences will surely spark debate even as it illuminates important intellectual connections between the disciplines. Delightfully readable, the book is a grand celebration of the pursuit of knowledge.

• More By G. John Ikenberry

The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past

John lewis gaddis.

208 pages, Paperback

First published November 14, 2002

About the author

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think? Rate this book Write a Review

Friends & Following

Community reviews.

For historians too start with surviving structures, whether they be archives, artifacts, or even memories. They then deduce the processes that produced them. Like geologists and paleontologists, they must allow for the fact that most sources from the past don’t survive, and that most daily events don’t even generate a survivable record in the first place.

Join the discussion

Can't find what you're looking for.

• Search Menu

Sign in through your institution

• Author Guidelines
• Open Access Options
• Why Publish with JAH?
• About Journal of American History
• About the Organization of American Historians
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Dispatch Dates
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

• < Previous

The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past . By John Lewis Gaddis. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. xiv, 192 pp. $23.00, isbn 0-19-506652-9.)

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Neil Jumonville, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past . By John Lewis Gaddis. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. xiv, 192 pp. $23.00, isbn 0-19-506652-9.), Journal of American History , Volume 90, Issue 4, March 2004, Pages 1419–1420, https://doi.org/10.2307/3660364

• Permissions Icon Permissions

In The Landscape of History , John Lewis Gad-dis, like Henry Adams a century before him, engages large questions about what it is that historians do and what it means to be scientific. This important book, written with grace, clarity, and wit, is sure to become a classic in the field of methodology.

Gaddis contends that the methods employed by historians and some scientists are now closer than they have been in a century—closer even than social scientific methods are to those of the hard sciences. It is not that historians have inched closer to the laboratory, but instead that slowly since Charles Darwin's time “scientists had begun to derive structures from processes: they had, in short, brought history into science,” which marked a “shift from a static to an evolutionary view” (p. 39). Further, science works by metaphors, such as “the behavior of an electron is ‘like’ the vibration of air in a spherical container” (p. 2). This dependence on metaphor and the recognition of patterns is another way that science and history are similar.

Organization of American Historians members

Personal account.

• Sign in with email/username & password
• Get email alerts
• Save searches
• Purchase content
• Activate your purchase/trial code
• Add your ORCID iD

Institutional access

Sign in with a library card.

• Sign in with username/password
• Recommend to your librarian
• Institutional account management
• Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.

• Click Sign in through your institution.
• Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
• When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
• Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:

• Click Sign in through society site.
• When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

• View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
• View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Short-term Access

To purchase short-term access, please sign in to your personal account above.

Don't already have a personal account? Register

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

• Process - a blog for american history
• Recommend to your Library

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1945-2314
• Print ISSN 0021-8723
• Copyright © 2024 Organization of American Historians
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Rights and permissions
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

• '' this park
• Find a Park
• Preservation
• Collections
• For Travelers
• For Teachers
• Publications
• Air Resources
• Biological Resources
• Climate Change
• Environmental Quality
• Geologic Resources
• Inventory & Monitoring
• National Natural Landmarks
• Natural Sounds & Night Skies
• Partnerships
• Photos & Multimedia
• Research Learning Centers
• Science & Research
• Social Science
• Water Resources
• Do Your Part
• Tax Incentives
• National Register of Historic Places
• Outdoor Recreation
• National Historic Trails
• Parks as Classrooms
• Professional Development
• Distance Learning
• Work With Us
• Jobs for Students
• Doing Business with Us
• Laws & Policies

• CRM: The Journal of Heritage Stewardship , Volumes 1-8
• Introduction
• Images of the Past: Historical Authenticity and Inauthenticity from Disney to Times Square
• Interview with William Seale
• America's World War II Home Front Heritage
• World War II Shipwrecks in Truk Lagoon: The Role of Interest Groups
• Historic Places and the Diversity Deficit in Heritage Conservation
• Research Reports
• Innovative Methods for Documenting Cultural Resources: Integrating GIS and GPS Technologies
• Presenting Race and Slavery at Historic Sites
• Studying Civil Rights and Racial Desegregation in the Pacific Northwest
• Reviews: Books
• Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Studies after J.B. Jackson
• Forest Communities, Community Forests
• The Promise of Cultural Institutions

The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past

• Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc
• Memory in Black and White: Race, Commemoration, and the Post-Bellum Landscape
• On Doing Local History
• Interpreting Historic House Museums
• Walton County Georgia
• Quincy's Market: A Boston Landmark
• Remaking Chinese America: Immigration, Family, and Community, 1940-1965
• African Reflections on the American Landscape: Identifying and Interpreting Africanisms
• Representations of Slavery: Race and Ideology in Southern Plantation Museums
• The Most Striking of Objects: The Totem Poles of Sitka National Historical Park
• Tribal Cultural Resource Management: The Full Circle to Stewardship
• Her Past Around Us: Interpreting Sites for Women's History
• Curating Archaeological Collections: From the Field to the Repository
• The Consequences of Past Stonecleaning Intervention on Future Policy and Resources; Maintenance and Repair of Cleaned Stone Buildings; and Building Stones of Scotland
• Reviews: Exhibits
• 1816 Georgetown: Building the Modern House
• Bittersweet: Japanese American Legacy and Resilience
• Taste of the Table: Ceramics in Early Maryland
• Man Made Marvels
• The Henry Hall of the American Indian
• Reviews: Multimedia
• ICCROM: International Centre for the Study of Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property
• The Ethnography of Lewis and Clark: Native American Objects and the American Quest for Commerce and Science
• National Association for Interpretation
• The Chicago Historical Society
• Finding Family Stories
• National Park Service Archeology and Ethnography Program

Book Review

By John Lewis Gaddis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002; 182 pp., illustrations, notes, index; cloth $23.00.

In The Landscape of History , John Lewis Gaddis offers an insightful glimpse at what historians do. Based on a series of lectures given by the author at Oxford University, the book offers a welcome introduction to historical methodology and an overview of the state of the art. In this short and thought-provoking book, Gaddis tackles many critical issues about the precision of historical methodology and the objectivity of history in a very accessible and often witty manner.

Gaddis claims that historians are reluctant to make their methods explicit for fear that their writing might resemble the design of the Pompidou Center in Paris where all sorts of ducts, conduits, escalators, and other building systems run outside of the building. He remarks that this reluctance also causes confusion about what historians do and how they do it. Rather than describing in detail how historians ponder evidence and construct narratives, Gaddis attempts to show how historical methodology is as legitimate as scientific methodologies by illustrating many parallels between the methodology of history and those of astronomy, geology, and paleontology.

The idea that legitimacy in science can only be achieved by moving towards predictability is outdated as Gaddis points out. While many disciplines in the political and social sciences still hold to reductionist models established in the 19th century, the adoption of an evolutionary model by many disciplines in the natural sciences has brought about revolutionary change. Some of the catalysts for this change, as Gaddis observes, were the advent of chaos and complexity theories in the 1970s, which eroded many of the assumptions of older scientific models.

Gaddis also embarks on an eloquent exposition of the question of uncertainty in history and begins to counter the post-modernist critique of history. Historians, he writes, "can never actually rerun history any more than astronomers, geologists, and paleontologists, and evolutionary biologists can rerun time." Thus, history can only represent the past, and no matter how close the representation resembles the reality, the fit can only be provisional. Yet, even poor representations, as time goes by and as witnesses disappear, often become the reality. Historians may make the past legible but in doing so they also imprison it. While this is not done with malignant intent, the reader would be well served to know how a particular history was constructed.

The pursuit of history, as Gaddis sees it, is a work in progress. Richer, more complex, views can be constructed as new material surfaces. The task is not simply to give new answers to old questions, but also to ask new questions. Just as uncertainty cannot be taken out of history, neither can the particular perspective of the historian. Every work of history makes a moral judgment either explicitly or implicitly, consciously or unconsciously. The issue then is not how to avoid making judgments, but how to make them responsibly.

Gaddis's exhortation to historians to make their methods more explicit is particularly intriguing and leaves much room for expansion. A more elaborate treatment of the topic in a similar didactic style would be very useful, especially for the general reader. It would be interesting to know how, for example, when reading a piece on the Cold War, an uninitiated reader may evaluate the historian's methodology and what additional insight might be gained.

The broad scope of Gaddis's observations makes this book engaging for the cultural resources practitioner and for others interested in history. His observations invite us to question many commonly held assumptions about how we see and interpret the past. For this reason, the book can be particularly useful for those entrusted with preserving and interpreting important aspects of our national heritage. This book urges us to remember that making the past legible must be pursued without forgetting that no matter how perfectly the pieces may fit together, history is only an approximation. No matter how perfectly detailed our historical tableau it is only a representation. Finding the gaps in the stories and making them visible is also important so that new generations may continue to look for answers and pose new questions.

Antonio Aguilar National Park Service

• Frequently Asked Questions
• Website Policies

• Advanced Search
• All new items
• Journal articles
• Manuscripts
• All Categories
• Metaphysics and Epistemology
• Epistemology
• Metaphilosophy
• Metaphysics
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Religion
• Value Theory
• Applied Ethics
• Meta-Ethics
• Normative Ethics
• Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality
• Philosophy of Law
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Value Theory, Miscellaneous
• Science, Logic, and Mathematics
• Logic and Philosophy of Logic
• Philosophy of Biology
• Philosophy of Cognitive Science
• Philosophy of Computing and Information
• Philosophy of Mathematics
• Philosophy of Physical Science
• Philosophy of Social Science
• Philosophy of Probability
• General Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Science, Misc
• History of Western Philosophy
• Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy
• Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy
• 17th/18th Century Philosophy
• 19th Century Philosophy
• 20th Century Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy, Misc
• Philosophical Traditions
• African/Africana Philosophy
• Asian Philosophy
• Continental Philosophy
• European Philosophy
• Philosophy of the Americas
• Philosophical Traditions, Miscellaneous
• Philosophy, Misc
• Philosophy, Introductions and Anthologies
• Philosophy, General Works
• Teaching Philosophy
• Philosophy, Miscellaneous
• Other Academic Areas
• Natural Sciences
• Social Sciences
• Cognitive Sciences
• Formal Sciences
• Arts and Humanities
• Professional Areas
• Other Academic Areas, Misc
• Submit a book or article
• Upload a bibliography
• Personal page tracking
• Archives we track
• Information for publishers
• Introduction
• Submitting to PhilPapers
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Subscriptions
• Editor's Guide
• The Categorization Project
• For Publishers
• For Archive Admins
• PhilPapers Surveys
• Bargain Finder
• About PhilPapers
• Create an account

The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past

Reprint years, other versions.

No versions found

Buy this book

PhilArchive

External links.

• Available at Amazon.com

Through your library

• Sign in / register and customize your OpenURL resolver
• Configure custom resolver

Similar books and articles

Citations of this work, references found in this work.

No references found.

Sabrina  M.S. Harper

M.A., U.S. History Teaching Concentration

Recent Posts

Developing Historical Thinking Skills in a Lower Division History Course: Teaching Practicum Project

Jesus Says, "Power to the People:" The Sacred Heart Church Urban Team, 1968-1972

"'Ghosts of Bigotry' The Ross-Yorke Controversy: Anti-Catholic Sentiment in Late Gilded

Book Review: The Landscape of History

Short Paper: The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past by John Lewis Gaddis

John Lewis Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University. Throughout his book, The Landscape of History, he uses the language of science to describe how historians approach their subjects and seeks to determine whether history is, in fact, a science. Gaddis acknowledged the foresight of both Carr and Bloch in their arguments about history as a science and said that they, “anticipated certain developments in the physical and biological sciences that have brought those disciplines closer than they once were to what historians had been doing all along.”[1]He explained that the key to the scientific method is experimentation, with the goal of replicating the result to prove its veracity. This, he notes, cannot be accomplished with history because one can’t go back in time to replicate the conditions which existed in the past. But, a historian can virtually replicateevents by representing reality in narrative form, illuminating the causes leading to and through the event so that others can better understand the causes and possible outcomes.[2]Through this virtual replication, he confirms, history islike science.

Application

Contrary to Gaddis, Carr placed greater emphasis on the person of the historian and their place in society, stating that this will influence how they write. About morality, Gaddis diverged from Carr and Bloch’s view that historians should abstain from making moral judgements. He stated that “historians have no choice but to make moral judgements.”[3]He acknowledged that it is unrealistic to assume that historians can be completely objective when they, themselves, are influenced by the time and place in which they live. He instead suggests that the historian should “distinguish the engagement explicitly” in his/her writing.[4]

Gaddis seeks to further elucidate Carr’s proposition that history and science share some common threads especially as more scientific discoveries are made and historians rely on other scientific fields, such as anthropology and sociology to complete their work. Historians, and scientists, begin their research or experimentations with curiosity. With the advent of the Enlightenment, science has done more than other fields with regard to eliciting agreement about our physical world across cultures, languages and societies. So, too does history, in a sense. Historians seek to build upon each other’s work; refining arguments, reinterpreting and rerunning experiments to write new narratives or illuminate events in different and innovative ways.

Gaddis, John Lewis. The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

[1]John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), xi.

[2]Gaddis, 43.

[3]Gaddis, 126.

[4]Gaddis, 128.

The Landscape of History: How Historians Map The Past

A summary and review of the book written by john lewis gaddis and notes to spark interest in reading it.

Mateinozaur

The study of history is so broad that it is easy to get lost. Before getting lost, doing history requires the use of specific methods to get a grasp of what history is about.

In his book, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map The Past ( Oxford University Press: 2004) , John Lewis Gaddis provides a framework that helps history beginners contemplate the historical landscape in which historians operate.

History Landscape

The book cover portrays the painting The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich (Image below). This romantic painting is an analogy to how historians see history. Since not all historians took part in important historical events, they speculate what, how, and why things happened as they did. This speculation leaves the wanderer with an image full of fog because all he has is a representation of the event, not the actual one.

Even when participating in such events, we only have a memory of them. The present became the past so we cannot retrieve it whenever we want just like a recording. History is about portraying the past onto a landscape because the past is all we have.

From this moment, thinking about the past as a landscape is the first landmark or the first method that historians use to represent events.

Time Travel

Taking part in events that become history would mean that one understood them better than the one who did not take part. No, imagine a soldier fighting in WW2 or someone living during the Black Death pandemic. How can they even think about history when such catastrophes are happening right next to them? It turns out that the one who did not witness such events is in a better position to do history. The historian disposes of a wide landscape which gives him more time to think, as opposed to being in the present moment when different historical episodes were taking place.

Despite the benefits of speculating about historical events, there is an inherent limitation in being absent from them. One cannot fully experience the sights, sounds, and smells of the past, such as the smell or sound of the Bofors 37mm anti-tank gun used in The Spanish Civil War . However, it’s worth noting that the specific details of such events may not have a significant impact on historians’ understanding of history. Nevertheless, it would be fascinating to experience more of what occurred in the past.

Selectivity is the ability to select different periods by which the historian can travel through his time machine, a second method that historians use.

Counterfactual Reasoning

What if Hitler had not risen to power in 1933, or if Germany had won World War II? These are common questions that people ask when examining history. However, it is important to consider how to use counterfactuals effectively. For example, it would be inaccurate to assume that modern technology would have influenced Hitler’s decisions, as he did not have access to the same resources as we do today.

Using counterfactuals establishes causation chains which can be important to extend one’s imagination through time, manipulating one variable at a time. Manipulating multiple variables at a time might make the thinking process more entertaining, but it can become quite messy, so sticking to one variable at a time aids you in not going astray much.

A bit too philosophical

In conclusion, this book may come to you more as a philosophical work about history , than actual history , which I think is a fair point. The author presents many metaphors, illustrations, examples to showcase how different people thought about things which were not necessarily historical. He gives examples of books like Orlando by Virginia Woolf and The Prince by Machiavelli to make analogies supporting his points.

As I mentioned in the beginning of the article, the book is for history beginners because it does not overwhelm you with events, but rather it makes you think about history more philosophically which can help with further history readings. In other words, the book provides a framework to think about history.

Thinking about the past as a landscape, manipulating space and time and using counterfactuals are just a few methods presented in the book. Note, those are not the only ones, but I think for me they were the most memorable out of them all.

Find below some useful links and don’t forget to clap, read and subscribe, helps much!

Useful links

The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past

Amazon.com: the landscape of history: how historians map the past ebook : gaddis, john lewis: kindle store.

www.amazon.com

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog - Wikipedia

Wanderer above the sea of fog is a painting by german romanticist artist caspar david friedrich made in 1818. it….

en.wikipedia.org

Bofors 37 mm anti-tank gun - Wikipedia

The bofors 37 mm anti-tank gun was an anti-tank gun designed by swedish manufacturer bofors in the early 1930s…, spanish civil war, the spanish civil war (1936-39) was the bloodiest conflict western europe had experienced since the end of wwi in 1918….

encyclopedia.ushmm.org

Black Death | Definition, Cause, Symptoms, Effects, Death Toll, & Facts

Black death, pandemic that ravaged europe between 1347 and 1351, taking a proportionately greater toll of life than any….

www.britannica.com

Adolf Hitler - Wikipedia

Adolf hitler ( german: [ˈaːdɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ; 20 april 1889 - 30 april 1945) was an austrian-born german politician who was…, world war ii | facts, summary, history, dates, combatants, & causes, world war ii was a conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during 1939-45. the main combatants were…, orlando: a biography, orlando: a biography [woolf, virginia] on amazon.com. *free* shipping on qualifying offers. orlando: a biography, amazon.com: the prince: 9781514649312: machiavelli, nicolo: books.

Written by Mateinozaur

20 years old, Philosophy & Theology student at KU Leuven. Sharing my journey.

Text to speech

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

A Review of John Lewis Gaddis' The Landscape of History

Related Papers

Orbit: Writing Around Pynchon

Christopher Leise

Arie M Dubnov

Course Description: This graduate seminar introduces major trends and critical issues in historiography and historical thinking, primarily focusing on developments that shaped the discipline during the twentieth century. Its principal aims are: (1) To survey important conceptual and methodological landmarks in the development of "History" as a kind of knowledge, discipline, rhetoric, and practice (2) To become familiar with critical theoretical approaches that have significantly impacted the writing of history and contributed to major historical "turns." (3) To point to often implicit and unexamined assumptions about historical research and presentation that precede our trips to the archives and hours of writing (4) To promote a sense of intellectual community among incoming graduate students in history with different areas of concentration. The seminar will put a special emphasis on scholarly debates regarding the above questions. Among other things, we will inquire into the history of certain basic historical concepts often thought not to have a history, including the past itself. We will trace how academic history came to be seen as a "science," rival conceptions that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries over what exactly this meant, and the challenge posed by postmodern theory to classifying historical knowledge as "objective." We will look at some of the different ways historians have tried to explain the purpose of their work while also probing the tension between academic and popular uses of history. We will explore debates over how broadly or narrowly historians should delimit their subjects (micro versus macro scales), as well as what weight they should ascribe to particulars or universals, persons or collectives, individual events or large-scale structures, dominant or subordinate groups, narrative or analytical presentation, hermeneutical or causal explanation, ideas or discourses or material factors in the understanding of historical experience and change. We will pay close attention to how historians conceptualize their questions, use evidence, and develop their interpretations, arguments, analyses, narratives, and explanations. Finally, we will examine how historians have assimilated (or not) insights and models from other disciplines, including philosophy, the natural sciences, social and economic theory, literary and critical theory, and anthropology.

Eesha Irfanullah

DÎVÂN: DİSİPLİNLERARASI ÇALIŞMALAR DERGİSİ / DÎVÂN: JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES

Journal of Cold War Studies

Binoy Kampmark

George Hegarty

Vladimir Pechatnov

Nine experts on Cold War history offer commentaries about John Lewis Gaddis&#39;s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of George F. Kennan, the first head of the U.S. State Department&#39;s Policy Planning Staff. The commentators come from several countries and offer a wide range of perspectives about Gaddis&#39;s George F. Kennan: An American Life, published by Penguin Books in 2011. Although most of the commentators express highly favorable assessments of the book, they also raise numerous points of criticism. Two of the commentators, Barton J. Bernstein and Anders Stephanson, present extended critiques of Gaddis&#39;s biography. The forum concludes with a reply by Gaddis to all the commentaries, especially those by Bernstein and Stephanson.

Christopher Leise , Crystal Alberts

For many years novelist William Gaddis, despite having won two National Book Critics Circle Awards and a MacArthur Foundation's "genius award," suffered from commercial and critical neglect. However, Gaddis has more recently experienced a resurgence in his popularity among both groups and is now considered one of the strongest American novelists. This collection of essays explores the interrelation between Gaddis's writing and the culture that helped to engender it. The essays cover such topics as technique, genre, religion, art, economics, colonialism and the role played by Gaddis's own travels through Europe and North Africa.

Stephen H Rigby

The American Historical Review

Daniel Adamilo Aaron

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

Bilal AVCIL

J.B. Lethbridge

Rafael Soto

Annales (English ed.)

Anthony Grafton

Philosophy in Review, Vol. 39, No. 2

Alexandre Leskanich

Larry Butler

Timo S Paananen

Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing. 2 vols.

Priscilla Roberts

Pranav Sujay

Matt Craven

Kostas Sbonias

Veeda Lynn Radilla

Daniel Hershenzon

Stephen M Lewis

Jean-Frédéric Schaub

Angela S . Allan

Orbit: A Journal of American Fiction

Ali Chetwynd

The Naval Review

Paul A. Roth

VEEDA LYNN RADILLA

Karsten Harries

Wael Hallaq

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

• ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

THE LANDSCAPE OF HISTORY

How historians map the past.

by John Lewis Gaddis ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2002

Provocative, polymathic, pleasurable. (Illustrations throughout)

Entertaining, masterful disquisition on the aims, limitations, design, and methods of historiography.

Gaddis (Military and Naval History/Yale; We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History , 1997) adapts the lectures he gave at Oxford while its George Eastman Visiting Professor (2000–01). Employing a wide range of metaphors (from Cleopatra’s nose to Napoleon’s underwear), displaying an extensive knowledge of current thinking in mathematics, physics, and evolutionary biology, alluding frequently to figures as disparate as Lee Harvey Oswald, Gwyneth Paltrow, John Lennon, and John Malkovich, Gaddis guides us on a genial trip into the historical method and the imagination that informs it. He begins by showing the relationship between a cartographer and a historian, asserting that the latter must “interpret the past for the purposes of the present with a view to managing the future.” He also takes us through a set of principles he believes historians must employ and reminds us that the imagination of the historian must always be tethered to reliable sources. He takes on social scientists (especially economists), observing that as they attempt to become more “scientific” (establishing laws, making accurate predictions), they move in the opposite direction of today’s “hard” scientists: “When social scientists are right, they too often confirm the obvious.” Gaddis moves to a discussion of variables (declaring irrelevant the distinction between “independent” and “dependent”: “interdependent,” he says, is the more accurate term), examines chaos theory and explores theories of causation. He ends with an intriguing discussion of the role of the biographer, insisting that historians retain a moral view of events, and with a reminder that they must necessarily distort even as they clarify. Historians, like teachers, he says, both oppress and liberate.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-19-506652-9

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Oxford Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002

GENERAL HISTORY

Share your opinion of this book

More by John Lewis Gaddis

BOOK REVIEW

by John Lewis Gaddis

THE 1985 CHICAGO BEARS AND THE WILD HEART OF FOOTBALL

by Rich Cohen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 29, 2013

Ideal for Chicagoans, both casual and die-hard sports fans, and anyone who wonders, “What happens when you have a dream and...

A fan’s engaging yet ultimately melancholy love letter to his beloved team and his hometown.

“Pick your team carefully, because your team is your destiny.”  Vanity Fair  and  Rolling Stone  contributor Cohen’s father’s solemn advice can be easily understood by sports fans. However, other readers will enjoy this entertaining, if profane, history of the 1985 NFL champion Chicago Bears. That team symbolized Chicago through their fierceness and audacity and by playing a “blitzkrieg” style of football that would certainly be banned today. Throughout, the author provides comical anecdotes about head coach Mike Ditka, a pugnacious tantrum-thrower whose method was “Ready, Fire, Aim.” Ditka’s orneriness mirrored that of “stingy, angry and mean” team owner George “Papa Bear” Halas (a founder of the NFL) and met its match in the defiant quarterback Jim McMahon, who, despite being undersized with a weak throwing arm and a bad eye, played without regard for his body and led his team to a 15-1 record. Cohen’s telling of the Bears’ founding and its tradition of nastiness is by turns devastating, regarding the irreparable harm done to players’ bodies and minds, and moving, as when he explains that Hall of Fame running back Walter Payton was “Chicago as Chicago wanted to be: a fighter…who’s been knocked down but always gets back up.” Cohen thankfully avoids sentimentality and doesn’t bog readers down in lengthy game reports or analyses. The author is at his best in the interviews with 32 retired players and executives who offer their impressions of the Bears’ famed “46” defense, “the most devastating force in football,” and its characters, including the Hit Man, Mongo, the Black & Blues Brothers and, most famously, the Fridge.

Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-374-29868-5

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013

GENERAL HISTORY | SPORTS & RECREATION | UNITED STATES | HISTORY

More by Rich Cohen

by Rich Cohen

THE SUPREME COURT, AMERICAN EUGENICS, AND THE STERILIZATION OF CARRIE BUCK

by Adam Cohen ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2016

A shocking tale about science and law gone horribly wrong, an almost forgotten case that deserves to be ranked with Dred...

Attorney, journalist, and bestselling author Cohen ( Nothing to Fear: FDR’s Inner Circle and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America , 2009, etc.) revisits an ugly chapter in American history: the 1920s mania for eugenics.

Among “the most brutal aphorisms in American jurisprudence,” Oliver Wendell Holmes’ 1927 pronouncement in Buck v. Bell —“Three generations of imbeciles are enough”—marked the high point of a shameful enthusiasm among the social elite for ridding the species of so-called mental defectives. With the nation anxious about changes wrought by unprecedented immigration, industrialization, and urbanization, and with marriage laws ineffective and segregation and warehousing of defectives too expensive and castration too barbaric, eugenics enthusiasts turned to mass sterilization as the solution to prevent the feebleminded from reproducing. The movement attracted its share of crackpots, racists, and conservatives intent on preserving an Anglo-Saxon heritage, but a shocking gallery of the very best people—professionals, intellectuals, feminists, and progressives—formed the vanguard. From this class came the principal players in Carrie Buck’s case: the physician/supervisor of Virginia’s Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, the drafter of the state’s sterilization law who defended it in the Supreme Court, the national scientific expert who affirmed its utility, and the celebrated justice who upheld its constitutionality. The stories of these four men and that of Carrie herself—a teenage girl neither mentally nor morally deficient, as her caretakers charged, and never informed of the purpose and effect the operation Virginia demanded—form the spine of Cohen’s compelling narrative. Through them, he also tells a larger story of the weak science underlying the eugenics cause and the outrageous betrayal of the defenseless by some of the country’s best minds. Carrie Buck died in 1983. The 8-1 decision, joined by the likes of Chief Justice William Howard Taft and Louis Brandeis, has never been overruled.

Pub Date: March 1, 2016

ISBN: 978-1594204180

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Penguin Press

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015

GENERAL HISTORY | UNITED STATES | HISTORY

More by Adam Cohen

by Adam Cohen

• Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
• News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
• Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
• Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
• Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
• More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
• About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions
• Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

• Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Buy new: .savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } -38% $11.83 $ 11 . 83 FREE delivery Monday, September 16 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35 Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Return this item for free.

We offer easy, convenient returns with at least one free return option: no shipping charges. All returns must comply with our returns policy.

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select your preferred free shipping option
• Drop off and leave!

Save with Used - Very Good .savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } $9.96 $ 9 . 96 FREE delivery September 24 - October 3 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35 Ships from: Amazon Sold by: Quest For Knowledge Books

Sorry, there was a problem..

0.69 mi | SANTA CLARASanta Clara 95050

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past 1st Edition

Purchase options and add-ons.

• ISBN-10 0195171578
• ISBN-13 978-0195171570
• Edition 1st
• Publisher Oxford University Press
• Publication date April 8, 2004
• Language English
• Dimensions 7.9 x 0.5 x 5.3 inches
• Print length 208 pages
• See all details

Frequently bought together

More items to explore

Editorial Reviews

Book description, about the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 1st edition (April 8, 2004)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0195171578
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0195171570
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1360L
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.9 x 0.5 x 5.3 inches
• #15 in Historiography (Books)
• #706 in United States History (Books)
• #730 in World History (Books)

About the author

John lewis gaddis.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 5 star 66% 16% 12% 3% 3% 66%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 4 star 66% 16% 12% 3% 3% 16%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 3 star 66% 16% 12% 3% 3% 12%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 2 star 66% 16% 12% 3% 3% 3%
• 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1 star 66% 16% 12% 3% 3% 3%

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Customers say

Customers find the book scholarly yet approachable. They describe the writing as easy to follow and well-written. Opinions differ on the meaning and pacing. Some find it fascinating and entertaining, while others find it boring and dull.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

Customers find the book scholarly yet approachable. They say it's a fascinating and illuminating read for both students and the general reader. Readers also mention the book offers an introduction to philosophy of science in general. They appreciate the remarkably clear explanation of history and the connections it makes between history and other disciplines.

"John Lewis Gaddis' The Landscape of History is a scholarly yet very approachable work that successfully attempts to pick up the mantel of the famous..." Read more

"...Reviewer's CommentsThe Landscape of History was both interesting and fun to read...." Read more

"...At less than 200 pages, this is a short book, but there's insight on every page , so the attentive reader will learn a lot...." Read more

"...over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries, and filled with well-thought and humorous barbs against both reductionism and relativism, this..." Read more

Customers find the content easy to read, follow, and enjoyable. They also say the writing is well-written, straightforward, and skillful. Readers also appreciate the conversational tone and subtle humor.

"...of his original lecture series: The conversational tone and injections of subtle humor . I've read and reviewed several of his other books...." Read more

"...to the human sciences and the natural sciences, yet his writing is very easy to follow and enjoyable, and not at all pretentious...." Read more

"This book is an entertaining and easily readable book about how historians map that unusual and mysterious landscape known as the past...." Read more

"...Lighthearted in tone, well-written (as a non-native speaker, I really enjoyed reading this book), but engaging and seriously arguing for it's thesis..." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the meaning of the book. Some say it's a fascinating examination of the meaning and method of history, while others say it lacks meaning, is verbose, and self-absorbed.

"...and each subsequent interpretation is added to by the next, providing a vast framework ...." Read more

" Too many metaphors . On several occasions it seemed the author just wanted to fill in pages...." Read more

"This book uses a number of metaphors which helps some readers like myself, yet I could see how others may be frustrated...." Read more

"This is verbose and self absorbed. it is very difficult to get the author's point, if he has one at all." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book. Some find it engaging and entertaining, while others find it boring and dull.

"...and the natural sciences, yet his writing is very easy to follow and enjoyable , and not at all pretentious...." Read more

"...was okay - a little interesting here and there, but as a whole, I found it boring ...." Read more

"...Overall the books is dull and lacking; more like a well written prose that lack on meaning." Read more

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Registry & Gift List

• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past

About this ebook, ratings and reviews, about the author, rate this ebook, reading information, more by john lewis gaddis.

The Landscape of History

By john lewis gaddis.

• ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.00 ·
• 22 Want to read
• 0 Currently reading
• 1 Have read

Preview Book

My Reading Lists:

Use this Work

Create a new list

My book notes.

My private notes about this edition:

Check nearby libraries

• Library.link

Buy this book

"What is history and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history an art or science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and many other questions in this witty, engaging, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft, as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today."--BOOK JACKET.

Previews available in: English

Showing 4 featured editions. View all 4 editions?

Add another edition?

Book Details

Classifications, source records, links outside open library.

• New York Times review

Community Reviews (0)

• Created December 4, 2021
• 6 revisions

Wikipedia citation

Copy and paste this code into your Wikipedia page. Need help?

Book Reviews

The Fantastical Scenarios of Yuval Noah Harari: From the Roman Past to the AI Future

In his haste to cram complex events into crisp little episodes, the historian passes over inconvenient details..

Corbin Barthold | 9.10.2024 7:00 AM

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI , by Yuval Noah Harari, Random House, 528 pages, $35

Early in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind , the book that made him a globally renowned intellectual, the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari stresses that human beings are storytellers. We use fictions—religions, nations, laws, currencies—to bind ourselves together and cooperate. The stories are largely made up, but they grip our minds. Often they help us; sometimes they lead us astray.

That's the spirit in which to receive Harari's latest volume, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI . Harari tells an entertaining and at times illuminating story. But the story doesn't withstand much scrutiny.

Nexus is about how information technologies shape societies. Because they communicated by speaking face-to-face, Harari tells us, hunter-gatherers had to live in small, flat bands. The advent of documents—tablets for tallying grain harvests and such—fueled the rise of centralized governments. The printing press and the radio were necessary for both large democracies and totalitarian regimes. Soon artificial intelligence could badly disrupt current political structures. Harari hangs a lot of bunting on this stuff, but you've basically just speed-read the book.

Harari does have a knack for viewing things from interesting angles. A modern society is held together, he proposes, by a combination of myth and bureaucracy. These forces must supply a functioning balance of truth and order. That balance is set according to how the society collects, organizes, distributes, and processes information. Democracies let information flow freely, an approach that's good for truth but dicey for order. Dictatorships constrain information, which tends to create order but ultimately crushes truth.

This narrative has its moments. But in his pursuit of a charming tale, Harari becomes an unreliable narrator. Take his portrait of the Scientific Revolution. Science relies on open inquiry, intense debate, and an insistence on settling disputes with empirical evidence. Harari wants to downplay the value of free speech, underline the need for certain expert bodies, and borrow the prestige of science for a wider swath of authority figures. For him, therefore, science's defining feature is the presence of "curation institutions" that "reward skepticism and innovation rather than conformity." This is misleading. A faculty of moral philosophers fits Harari's criteria, but, unlike a biology department, they make no objective progress, achieve nothing concrete, and often simply evolve to keep pace with elite sensibilities.

Or consider how Harari contorts the fall of the Roman Republic: He is so focused on inadequate information networks that he fails to mention more conventional factors, such as thwarted land reform or political brinkmanship. Worse, he misses a weakness in his argument. The republic collapsed in part because its information networks were strong . Julius Caesar spent nine years fighting in Gaul. Not least because he was a popularis , he needed to keep himself fresh in people's minds back in Rome. Hence his famous Commentaries , which were churned out quickly, raced home, and likely recited to large audiences. Caesar's ability to disseminate information from abroad eased his rise to dictatorship.

At times Harari softens his point, claiming merely that the republic's information infrastructure couldn't have supported an empire-wide mass democracy. Maybe so—but you can't be very sure reading Nexus . In his haste to cram complex events into crisp little episodes, Harari passes over inconvenient details.

If Harari is this slapdash when he discusses the past, how can we trust him when he turns to the even harder task of predicting the future? We can't. Harari believes that artificial intelligence could soon overpower us, becoming the de facto ruler of our politics, culture, and decision making. To bolster this alarmist vision, Harari stacks the deck in favor of AI and against human agency. AI is robust: It could create "mythologies…far more complex and alien than any human-made god." Humanity is frail: Algorithms could "exploit with superhuman efficiency the weaknesses, biases, and addictions of the human mind." We will be putty in the machines' hands (people could "come to use a single computer advisor as a one-stop oracle"). Harari is committed to this story, but he's just spitballing. His favorite words are "may" and "might."

Harari's dim view of human capacity shows up when he raises the QAnon conspiracy theory. QAnon's spread has had "far-reaching consequences," Harari writes. But that doesn't mean QAnon is convincing to most people. It's just the conspiracy theory du jour among a subset of the Americans predisposed to believe in wild conspiracy theories . Nonetheless, Harari leaps to the conclusion that, because some people find QAnon compelling, almost all people will soon find AI-generated ideologies compelling, as AI's celestial powers of persuasion overawe us. "Computers…won't need to send killer robots to shoot us. They could manipulate human beings to pull the trigger."

So AI might distort our minds in some dystopian fashion. Or it might sharpen our thoughts on what we'd believe anyway, or help us dream up fresh ideas that remain largely our own. You don't know. I don't know. Harari definitely doesn't know. (That said, do you feel like you're easily influenced? Probably not. Much evidence suggests that, by and large, people's beliefs are not as malleable as intellectuals like Harari suppose.)

Whatever the topic—AI, privacy, surveillance, biometric data, social media algorithms, social credit systems—Harari's approach is to highlight bad news and then extrapolate. He tends to assume that trends continue indefinitely, that checks and balances never emerge, that countermeasures are never deployed. He discusses with trembling credulity Nick Bostrom's notorious paperclip-alypse , in which an AI, blindly pursuing its prime directive to create as many of the small metal fasteners as possible, exterminates the human race. He ignores the many criticisms of that scenario, such as the fact that no one designs products to have a single goal and then releases them untested. (Self-driving cars don't shoot off in a straight line at maximum speed.) He convinces himself that technology is likely to destroy us and that our salvation lies in listening to wise men like him and imposing government regulations.

Harari is especially bad on the subject of free expression. He worries about problems "created by information" and "made worse by more information." He cautions that "Free conversation must not slip into anarchy." He laments the ease with which average people can now circumvent "gatekeeper" institutions, such as the legacy media, and "join the debate." "Manipulative bots" will "build friendships" with these rubes, he fears, and "influence" their fragile psyches. As AI advances, he warns, liberal democracies might lose the ability to "combine free debates with institutional trust."

Yet for all this scornful rhetoric, Harari's proposals for reform in this area, as in others, are strangely muted. He urges social media platforms to do more to arbitrate truth (never mind how poorly past such efforts have gone), and he recommends banning bots that pretend to be human. If democracy is drowning in information, Harari is not about to save us.

Perhaps Harari can't imagine plausible solutions to his fantastical scenarios. Perhaps he can't stomach setting forth bold but highly illiberal schemes. Or perhaps he understands, deep down, that the world needn't take drastic action in response to hundreds of pages of half-baked guesswork. "I've just told a story," Harari says at one point in Nexus . "These are all wild speculations," he says at another. Here and there, glimmers of self-awareness.

Vance Says He'd Have Gone Along With Trump's Plot To Block Certification of the 2020 Election

Eric Boehm | 9.10.2024 4:30 PM

Are Teachers Really Underpaid?

Emma Camp | 9.10.2024 2:20 PM

The First Amendment Right To 'Greenmail' Developers

Christian Britschgi | 9.10.2024 1:20 PM

Kamala Harris Pledges To Soak the Rich—But Her Policies Have Showered Them In Cash

Jack Salmon | 9.10.2024 12:15 PM

The Feds Won't Let You Use These Cheap Chinese Cellphones

Jack Nicastro | 9.10.2024 10:48 AM

Go ad-free with Reason Plus.

And get unlimited access to everything at reason.com.

You have exceeded your limit for simultaneous device logins.

Your current subscription allows you to be actively logged in on up to three (3) devices simultaneously. click on continue below to log out of other sessions and log in on this device., celebrate diversity through dance with these 10 picture books.

Throughout history and around the world, dancing has been a way for people to express themselves and celebrate their cultural identity. Share these titles with young readers in time for National Dance Day on September 21.

Throughout history and around the world, dancing has been a way for people to express themselves and celebrate their cultural identity. Share these titles with young readers in time for National Dance Day on September 21.

My Cat Does Ballet by Robert Heidbreder. illus. by Matt Schu. S. & S./Atheneum. ISBN 9781665917032.  PreS-Gr 1 –A young boy and his friends love to discuss their cats and their antics. The boy insists that his cat does ballet! Believing his friends are jealous of the feat, he organizes a “Corps de Chat,” a ballet group for cats.  VERDICT A creative celebration of dance, friendly competition, cats and their gifts.

Tango Red Riding Hood by Rachel S. Hobbs. illus. by Carolina Vázquez. Gnome Road. ISBN 9781957655147.  Gr 1-4 –A Latinx retelling of  Red Riding Hood  with a dancing Red and a wolf eager to learn English. Moni is on her way to visit her abuela and is distracted by a music-playing lobo.  VERDICT A bright retelling with a real beat, this not only shares the experience of learning a language, but will be a story hour hit.

Soul Step by Jewell Parker Rhodes & Kelly McWilliams. illus. by Briana Mukodiri Uchendu. Little, Brown. ISBN 9780316562713.  PreS-Gr 3 –A young Black girl learns what gets her mama through the everyday: step. She learns from her mother’s sorority sister, her aunt, and a community leader that step is about sisterhood and tradition; passed down through generations born into slavery and then flourishing in Black Greek organizations.  VERDICT A wonderfully rhythmic picture book on an aspect of Black culture that is not often highlighted in the picture book format.

Bhangra Baby by Kabir Sehgal & Surishtha Sehgal. illus. by Ani Bushry. S. & S./Beach Lane. ISBN 9781665936156.  PreS-Gr 1 –Let’s dance Bhangra with a joyful, colorful book that takes readers through learning about body movement and the music and words that come with it. Not sure what Bhangra is? A brief overview appears at the end with pronunciation guides for terms that may be new to some readers.  VERDICT This is a great addition to any collection, especially for story times looking to give kids—and families—time to dance together!

Get Print. Get Digital. Get Both!

Libraries are always evolving. Stay ahead. Log In.

Add Comment :-

Be the first reader to comment.

Comment Policy:

• Be respectful, and do not attack the author, people mentioned in the article, or other commenters. Take on the idea, not the messenger.
• Don't use obscene, profane, or vulgar language.
• Stay on point. Comments that stray from the topic at hand may be deleted.
• Comments may be republished in print, online, or other forms of media.
• If you see something objectionable, please let us know . Once a comment has been flagged, a staff member will investigate.

First Name should not be empty !!!

Last Name should not be empty !!!

email should not be empty !!!

Comment should not be empty !!!

You should check the checkbox.

Please check the reCaptcha

Ethan Smith

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.

Posted 6 hours ago REPLY

Jane Fitgzgerald

Posted 6 hours ago

Michael Woodward

Continue reading.

Added To Cart

Related , 17 titles to help little ones return to school | back-to-school roundup, the no othering zone: 19 picture books that celebrate our differences | great books, houston public library hosts mental health program for families | reasons to love libraries, why read-alongs like vox and wonderbook hold strong appeal, 40 essential nonfiction picture books | slj 2024 stars so far, "what is this" design thinking from an lis student.

The job outlook in 2030: Librarians will be in demand

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, --> Log In

You did not sign in correctly or your account is temporarily disabled

REGISTER FREE to keep reading

If you are already a member, please log in.

Passwords must include at least 8 characters.

Your password must include at least three of these elements: lower case letters, upper case letters, numbers, or special characters.

The email you entered already exists. Please reset your password to gain access to your account.

Create an account password and save time in the future. Get immediate access to:

News, opinion, features, and breaking stories

Exclusive video library and multimedia content

Full, searchable archives of more than 300,000 reviews and thousands of articles

Research reports, data analysis, white papers, and expert opinion

Passwords must include at least 8 characters. Please try your entry again.

Your password must include at least three of these elements: lower case letters, upper case letters, numbers, or special characters. Please try your entry again.

Thank you for registering. To have the latest stories delivered to your inbox, select as many free newsletters as you like below.

No thanks. return to article, already a subscriber log in.

We are currently offering this content for free. Sign up now to activate your personal profile, where you can save articles for future viewing

Thank you for visiting.

We’ve noticed you are using a private browser. To continue, please log in or create an account.

CREATE AN ACCOUNT

Screen Rant

Valiant's resurgence is here - and it was worth the wait (advance review).

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

Why Should DC & Marvel Have All the Fun? VALIANT COMICS' Stunning Swimsuit Covers Ring in Summer

Faith returns #1 establishes a daring new status quo for valiant's high-flying hero (review), dc finally redeems an arrowverse hero after destroying their reputation.

Warning: contains spoilers for Resurgence of the Valiant Universe #1!

After an epic buildup, Valiant Comics ’ Resurgence of the Valiant Universe has arrived–and it was worth the wait. One of the defining comic publishers of the early 1990s, Valiant returned to the scene in 2012 with a revitalized universe. Valiant, after a period of relative dormancy, has returned, entering into a new partnership with Alien Books. This has jump-started the line, and Resurgence #1 charts a bold new path.

Resurgence of the Valiant Universe #1 is written by Becky Cloonan, Michael W. Conrad, Fred Van Lente and AJ Ampadu, and drawn by Guillermo Fajardo and Julio Azamor. Doctor Silk has emerged as humanity’s champion amidst a time of great crisis. Silk offers Earth the promise of a better life, in exchange for loyalty to him. Silk is opposed by a team of Valiant heroes, including Ninjak, Faith, X-O and Ivar the Timewalker.

As Silk continues to consolidate his power, the desperate heroes chart a course through deep space to find Divinity, the only one powerful enough to stop Silk.

Valiant's Comic Book History, Explained

There have been multiple versions of the valiant universe.

Resurgence of the Valiant Universe , as the name implies, is a rebirth for the venerable comics' publisher. Former Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter helped found the company in the late 1980s, and by 1992 had emerged as one of the most exciting comic book publishers in North America. Along with Image Comics , Valiant helped challenge the stranglehold Marvel and DC held on the American comic market. Thanks to a mid-decade market implosion as well as an ill-advised sale to video game manufacturer Acclaim, Valiant was gone by decade’s end.

The heroes of the Valiant Universe, including Archer and Armstrong and Shadwoman, were too good to stay gone for long.

The heroes of the Valiant Universe, including Archer and Armstrong and Shadwoman, were too good to stay gone for long. The rights to a majority of Valiant characters (excluding the Western Publishing heroes, like Solar or Magnus) were purchased and a new incarnation of the company was born. Debuting to critical acclaim in 2012, the new Valiant line brought their stable of heroes into the 21st century. The line’s output has dropped considerably in recent years, but last year, Valiant joined forces with Alien Books, setting the publisher down the road to Resurgence.

Resurgence of the Valiant Universe Has Been Building for Months

Doctor silk is poised to become a major villain.

Like any good major crossover event, Resurgence of the Valiant Universe had a massive, epic buildup. This past Spring, Valiant launched a slew of new titles starring their biggest heroes, each one marked as part of The Road to Resurgence . Valiant, hyper aware that many of Resurgence’s readers are either lapsed fans or completely new to the publisher, put “catch-up” pages in the front of every title. This brought fans up to speed on the state of the Valiant Universe heading into Resurgence. At the same time, these books laid the foundation for Resurgence’s epic story.

Swimsuit variant covers are all the rage, and now the superstars of the Valiant Universe are strutting their stuff in a series of covers this summer.

Central to the Resurgence of the Valiant Universe is Doctor Silk. A new villain created for the latest incarnation of the Valiant Universe, Doctor Silk, has emerged as its primary antagonist. Previous Valiant villains, such as Master Darque or Toyo Harada, all came close to their goals of domination, but Doctor Silk is preparing to do what those two failed at: putting heroes, such as Bloodshot and the Eternal Warrior, in their place. Silk, who is virtually immortal thanks to his ability to transfer his consciousness into clone bodies, is the biggest existential threat yet to the Valiant Universe.

Valiant Has a Good Track Record With Crossovers

Valiant has used crossovers to put themselves on the map before--and they will again.

Resurgence of the Valiant Universe is the biggest event in Valiant history since the company returned in 2012. Resurgence is looking to put Valiant back into the hearts and minds of fans, and with its epic scope, it might do just that. In past incarnations, Valiant used major crossover events as a means to introduce their characters to new audiences. In 1992, Valiant released Unity . This event, which had been building since the dawn of the Valiant Universe, was a massive success, both sales-wise and with critics. After Unity , the buzz Valiant enjoyed among fans only grew.

After Valiant's purchase by Acclaim, they unveiled another incarnation of the universe, sometimes referred to fans as "VH2."

Valiant followed up on Unity two years later with The Chaos Effect, which worked on an even wider canvas than its predecessor. Master Darque, who emerged after Unity as Valiant’s primary antagonist, launched a campaign against its heroes. The Chaos Effect crossed over into every Valiant title during the summer of 1994. Unfortunately, the downturn in sales had already begun, and Valiant, like many other new and smaller publishers, felt the strain. Despite these less than ideal circumstances, The Chaos Effect was still a hit, with fans if not critics.

Resurgence of the Valiant Universe is the Publisher's Biggest Event in Decades

Resurgence makes good use of valiant's stable of characters.

Once again, Valiant is gearing up for a major crossover, the first in its new line to duplicate the grand scope of Unity or The Chaos Effect . Valiant has done smaller crossover events since their return, such as Harbinger Wars, but these were limited to just a few titles. The third volume of Divinity saw Valiant release a variety of one-shots featuring their heroes on a new world created by the mega-powerful Divinity. Yet these did not cross over into the main line, giving Resurgence of the Valiant Universe the honor of being their biggest event to date.

Faith Returns #1, from Valiant Comics, introduces a bold new status quo for the character as she is now on the run from the authorities.

Just like its predecessors in Valiant’s previous incarnation, Resurgence showcases the company’s wide slew of characters. Resurgence’s first issue features Valiant's biggest icons, such as the Geomancer and Ninjak, mixing them up with newer additions such as Savage. Divinity, a Russian cosmonaut who disappeared in the 1950s, only to return to the present day as a god, is conspicuously absent in Resurgence #1, but the issue’s ending guarantees he will soon make his presence felt. A few other Valiant characters, such as Quantum and Woody, were also absent, but the event is still young.

Valiant employed “catch up” pages to wonderful effect during Resurgence’s buildup, and they use them here again to introduce readers to the event’s three main factions.

What makes Resurgence of the Valiant Universe so successful is how it effortlessly juggles these characters, ensuring each gets their time to shine. Some, such as Savage, are only in Resurgence #1 for a brief period, but make the most of their time. In Savage’s case, this involves tearing his way out of a rampaging dinosaur. Valiant employed “catch up” pages to wonderful effect during Resurgence’s buildup, and they use them here again to introduce readers to the event’s three main factions. Commitment to the readers was a hallmark of the classic Valiant universe , and the new incarnation continues this trend.

Resurgence of the Valiant Universe Is a Must-Read For All Valiant Fans

Where does valiant head after resurgence.

Valiant stands at a crossroads once again, and Resurgence of the Valiant Universe represents the culmination of months of preparation and buildup. Resurgence is Valiant’s biggest event in 12 years, and its first issue is worthy of the buildup and the hype. Resurgence of the Valiant Universe is not only an excellent introduction (or reintroduction) to these characters, but also sets the stage for their exciting futures. Valiant has remained mum about where their universe is heading after Resurgence , but with a high quality debut issue, it is certain to be bright.

Resurgence of the Valiant Universe #1 is on sale September 18 from Valiant Comics!

• Valiant Comics