That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession (Ideas in Context, Series Number 13)

The aspiration to relate the past "as it really happened" has been the central goal of American professional historians since the late nineteenth century. In this remarkable history of the profession, Peter Novick shows how the idea and ideal of objectivity was elaborated, challenged, modified, and defended over the past century. Drawing on the unpublished correspondence as well as the published writing of hundreds of American historians, this book is a richly textured account of what American historians have thought they were doing, or ought to be doing, when they wrote history--how their principles influenced their practice and practical exigencies influenced their principles. Published with the support of the Exxon Education Foundation.

The aspiration to relate the past' as it really happened' has been the central goal of American professional historians since the late nineteenth century. In this remarkable history of the profession, Novick shows how the idea and ideal of objectivity were elaborated, challenged, modified, and defended over the last century.