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Hoffer, Peter Charles. Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud-American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, andGoodwin. New York: Public Affairs Press, 2004.287 pp. $26.95.
I seldom label anything I review a "must read," but this book comes close. It draws media history scholars and graduate students into cross currents moving through the community of historians. They will be sobered at the loose enforcement of whatever pass as the rules of writing history and reminded of the need for honesty in what they do.
The author is a distinguished research professor in the University of Georgia history department (unfortunately, I have never met him, though his office is less than a football Geld away from the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication). His expertise is in early American history and the history of law. His service on the American Historical Association's professional division, charged with confidential investigation of ethical transgressions by historians, which has now been disbanded, apparently left him cynical about attempts to investigate and censure the ethical lapses in scholarly history.
His book, meanwhile, earned a frontpage review in the...