Fiction and History

Category: From the historians

  • Michael Fellman’s concept of survival lying

    Loyalty was not the safest and most common presentation of self during this guerilla war; prevarication was. Frankness and directness led to destruction more often than did reticence and withdrawal. Not letting on, telling the questioner—from either side—as little as possible but enough to placate him, became the safest avenue of escape. I would call…

  • Humor in history

    This can’t have been funny when Colonel Puchkov wrote it in 1760. And Elizabeth Roberts in her book Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro may not have thought it funny. But she’s pretty worldly and nuanced in this Cornell UP book. So, maybe she smiled. It’s Puchkov’s quote, delivered before a grim…

  • Jared Farmer’s remarks on extra-local history

    One historian who may not dismiss novelists and fiction is Jared Farmer. In accepting the 2009 Francis Parkman Prize from the Society of American Historians he said some interesting things about the craft and the historians’ guild. Farmer’s book, On Zion’s Mount, garnered him the award. Farmer says this in his speech: A history book…