(Un)Directed Reading Bleg

by Cliopatria

"Bleg" is a verb coined from"beg" and"blog", a neologism that manages, no mean feat, to be even uglier than its parent word,"blog." To bleg means to use one's blog to beg for assistance, in particular when you're asking your readers to do parts of your own job for you. Here, I'll give you a real-life example:

I'm supervising an independent"directed reading" course by a fourth-year undergraduate student who is, for a variety of reasons, unable to take my 20th Century U.S. History course. Between now and April, he'll be reading somewhere between a dozen and two dozen books, discussing them with me, and then writing some kind of a synthetic essay. Normally these directed readings are organized around a fairly narrow theme or topic--the idea is to offer them when a student is interested in a subject matter for which there is no course. But in this case the topic the student is interested in is just that broad: 20th Century U.S. History. I'm in the process of assembling a list of books to recommend.

Here's the fun part, and here's where you come in. I am choosing to look at the highly un-directed nature of this"directed reading" as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. We (my student and I, and you) can put almost anything we want on this list. It is not the same as a graduate reading list or a syllabus for a survey course. It does not matter if we cover all or even most aspects of 20th Century U.S. History. The student could, after all be doing a full course on something really specific like"late 19th and early 20th century spiritualism, stage magic, and show inventors" (which is the other independent study project I happen to be supervising this year) and would still get the same kind of credit. What I want to assemble, both for this student and for my own future reference, is a list of books in American history that have genuine scholarly merit but are above all good, accessible reads. What would you recommend?

Zachary Schrag, a smart young historian at George Mason University who I've had the pleasure of meeting at a conference or two, pulled a together just the sort of list I'm thinking of and posted it on his website as"A Layperson's Reading List in American History." It's a great list, and I've already borrowed from it liberally, but I know there are more books that could go on this list. Help me out, o denizens of Blogtown!

If you're not an Americanist, I'm still interested to hear your thoughts. What are the books in your own field that stand out? Not the magnum opuses that defined the field, but the great little books that you'd press into the hands of a smart undergraduate, or a relative, or a friend, saying,"yes, this is serious history, but it's also a great read."

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Jonathan Dresner - 10/5/2006

Oh, I love constitutions. I'm still using the question my own Japanese history prof asked as an undergrad: Compare and contrast the Meiji and 1947 constitutions.

I love assigning Hammurabi's code, too.

Oscar Chamberlain - 10/5/2006

Yale's Avalon site has a wonderous collection of US related documents particularly from the 18th and 19th centuries.

A fine place to start there would be to read the English Bill of Rights--it has some suprises--and then to compare it to the US constitution's, and then to those in the state constitutions, for example Pennsylvania's 1776 constitution on the same site.

Alan Baumler - 10/4/2006

Two on China are

Jung Ching Wild Swans
As much as I dislike her book on Mao, this is one of the best and most accessible Cultural Revolution books

Henrietta Harrison The Man Awakened From Dreams: One Man's Life In A North China Village 1857-1942
The story of a failed scholar who had to become a schoolteacher and then a mining entrepreneur and then a farmer and always a writer. Great stuff.

Jonathan Dresner - 10/4/2006

More and more I'm moving my classroom assignments to primary sources, or at least secondary ones which attempt to recreate a moment in time. It's very important, I think we all agree, that students have a sense of how to read primary materials, get a feel for the texture of historical work and the periods in question. There's nothing like the complexity and shadings of primary materials for getting students involved; I particularly like autobiographical works....

So, what are the best primary sources for students?

Ed Schmitt - 10/4/2006

Thomas Guglielmo's study of Italians in Chicago, White On Arrival, is a fantastic piece of work - readable, tightly focused, and forcefully argued, and a model of clear historical writing. His synthetic approach to social history - weaving culture and politics into the equation - is really seamless. Wait, did that sound like a jacket blurb? I'm really writing this of my own accord! Great book.

Oscar Chamberlain - 10/4/2006

It's out of print, darn it, but I would add Wiebe's "Opening of American Society." Peace be to Wilentz's new work--which I have already started citing in my stuff, but I think that Wiebe's remains the best over view of early national and antebellum United States. Besides, unlike Wilentz, you don't risk breaking your foot if you drop it.

Nathanael D. Robinson - 10/4/2006

Actually, I'll start in the US with Kevin Boyle's Arc of Justice, which despite the pretenses of being a micro-history, is really a broad study of race and urbanism in America.

It may be a chestnut, but Carl Schorske's Fin-de-Siècle Vienna is a no-brainer. Richly imaginative, covering art, urban planning, sciences, and politics, I have put it into the hands of people who will travel to Austria. IM(not so)HO, it should be on every Europeanist’s list. Modris Eksteins’ Rites of Spring is also a great entry for Europeanists.

In German history, there are many studies that are ripe: George Mosse’s The Nationalization of the Masses, Peter Gay’s Weimar Culture, Omar Bartov’s Hitler’s Army. But I have a soft spot for Fritz Fischer’s From Kaiserreich to Third Reich, a short, readable book which deals with the questions of continuity and German peculiarity. Michael Gross’ The War against Catholicism has become a recent favorite of mine for its exploration of the missionary culture of 19th century Germany.

In French history, Michael Miller’s The Bon Marché is a really fun read about commerce and fashion among the white-collar workers of Paris. Just about anything from Alain Corbin will do; and Eugen Weber’s Peasants into Frenchmen, although weighty, is infinitely imaginative, each chapter having numerous chestnuts for the reader.

Anything by Natalie Zemon Davis works for the early modern period, as does Thomas Laqueur's Making Sex. For Italy, something from Carlo Ginzburg would work.

African history is one area where I would like to no more about this kind of reading. Monographs always seem to be weighty. Off the top of my head, I would name John Thornton’s The Kongolese Saint Anthony, Charles van Onselen’s The Seed is Mine, and Johannes Fabian’s Out of our Sense.

Rob MacDougall - 10/4/2006

Nothing wrong with that! Wiebe was on my list already; I've never read Conkin, but will check him out.

Jonathan Dresner - 10/4/2006

Well, it's a safe choice, given the Pulitzer and all, but John Dower's Embracing Defeat is fantastic reading, and fantastic history, as well.

Louise Young's Japan's Total Empire was much better than I expected, really quite readable. (Sorry, but most books on empire just lay there....)

Neil Waters, Japan's Local Pragmatists and Karen Wigen's The Making of a Japanese Periphery are remarkably social and geographic histories centered on the Meiji era.

And, much to my suprise, experts in the field still recommend Ivan Morris's World of the Shining Prince for the Heian period.

Valerie Hansen's the Open Empire is a textbook, technically, about pre-1600 China, but it's also eminently readable and rich with primary sources and new interpretations.

Philip Kuhn's Soulstealers is an incredible snapshot of a dynasty about to descend from glory to paralysis.

Paul Cohen's History in Three Keys is a study of the Boxer Rebellion which takes historiography seriously.

That's off the top of my head (and while watching "Since You Were Gone," but that's another story).

Ralph E. Luker - 10/4/2006

..., but so what? I still like Robert Wiebe's The Search for Order and Paul Conkin's The New Deal. They're both of an older generation of scholarship, but I find them highly readable and provocative.