0

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Do you knowthis man? President Theodore Roosevelt, not his distant cousin Franklin

really an integration," says freshman Liza
Norton, who intends to major in it.
The reformers, though, often unfairly
caricature the old-school approach to his-
tory as musty and boring. It need not be so.
One of the most forceful critiques of the
new approach-and defenses of the old-
comes from the eminent Columbia histori-
an Jacques Barzun. In a letter to The New
York Times in January, Barzun wrote:
"What has happened to history in the
last 50 years is not that it has discov-
ered culture and society, but that it has
given up narrative-the story that is the
mark of history proper; it has been re-
placed by static studies of conditions and
attitudes. In a word, it has become retro-
spective sociology, much of it based on
more doubtful evidence than would be ac-
cepted by a sociologist studying the pres-
ent, most of it not memorable, for lack of
pattern and story."
The good news about the debate over

history is that there really is a comfort-
able middle ground. Barzun was not re-
jecting a broader approach. "All but a
few of the great historians, beginning with
Herodotus, have been social and cultural
historians, as well as political and mili-
tary; they are great because they are
comprehensive," he writes. And Natalie
Davis does not reject narrative. In fact
her highly regarded "The Return of Mar-
tin Guerre," also a film, turned 16th-cen-
tury French peasant life into an absorbing
and informative story. Whatever the
trends of the moment in the study of his-
tory, students will continue to be attracted
by those universities that combine the
timeless scholarly values of insight and
interest, which are always the best ways
to bring the past alive.
JONATHAN ALTER with MELISSA BIRKS
in AnnArbor, T O D D B A R R E TT in Princeton,
MARSHA YOUNG in Rochester,
FELICIA KORNBLUH in Cambridge
and bureau reports

Students may be trying to untangle family roots: Immigrants on Ellis Island

MARCH 1988