This episode is another joint venture with The China Beat blog, a recording of the conversation between Jeff Wasserstrom and Mara Hvistendahl held at UC Irvine on April 23rd.  As described on the China Beat, “The lively discussion covered Hvistendahl’s experiences in China, the differences in writing for a popular audience as an academic versus as a journalist, and Hvistendahl’s current book project (due out in 2011) on prenatal sex selection and gender imbalance.”  Jeff Wasserstrom also discussed his recently-released book China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know.

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In the meantime, I am thrilled to announce the publication of the latest issue of Rethinking History, with a forum built around Aaron Sachs‘s essay “Letters to a tenured historian: imagining history as creative nonfiction – or maybe even poetry.”

My Writing of History course had the privilege of reading Sachs’s letters in an advance copy–quite advanced, given that the cover note suggests that the letters are recovered in 2049, “after the most recent round of earthquakes, mudslides, and fires, when Southern California was finally abandoned.” The curators of the future wonder, “Who would write such fake epistles, and footnote them, to boot?” Readers of the present will be richly rewarded if they find out.

Rethinking History has gathered more letters in response: a note of introduction from James Goodman, and reactions and reflections from Jenny Price, Scott Reynolds Nelson, Martha Hodes, Robert Rosenstone, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Kate Brown, and Gregory Downs. My print copy is in the mail (one might find a great deal right now for AHA members, if you would like one) and I don’t have complete access online, but the abstracts suggest this is a roundtable on the state of writing history creatively (and writing about history creatively) not to be missed.

Links to some of Jeff’s favorite reads:

• Jonathan Spence, The Question of Hu
• Amitav Ghosh, In An Antique Land
• Mike Davis, City of Quartz
• Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air
• The travel writing of Pico Iyer
• Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

Wasserstrom’s latest book, China’s Brave New World, was featured on a list of Pankaj Mishra’s favorite books of 2007. Mishra writes, “In this book Jeffrey Wasserstrom shows why he is one of the most sensible writers on a subject that most Western writers spoil with either paranoia or excessive awe.” Jeff is also a member of The China Beat blog team.

Stay tuned for next week’s episode of MHP with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, AHA president-elect and author of Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History.

From the Library Journal review:

“These nimble and knowledgeable essays from a respected historian…include commentaries on such recent events as the Tiananmen Incident, as well as light but erudite historical thought pieces, such as one on former President Grant’s world tour in 1879. Others look at the fate of globalized franchises such as McDonald’s and Marxism, the challenges of historical and cross-cultural analogies, and sympathetic critiques of reporting on China.”

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Tune in next week for Part 2 of the podcast interview with author Jeffrey Wasserstrom.

• How do those writing about the past convey what they have learned and the arguments they want to make?
• What rhetorical devices do they use to try to enlighten, capture the attention of, provoke, persuade, or even amuse their reader?
• Why do we think of some academic historians as especially good stylists or practitioners of the craft of historical writing?
• What place, if any, should there be in non-fiction historical writing for techniques and approaches more often associated with one or another genre of fiction?
  
• Why do some book reviews stick with us while others are immediately forgettable?

Below are the texts that we’re reading for the seminar (with hyperlinks). The books were all paired with relevant readings on the class syllabus. However, for ease of posting here, I’ve disrupted the connections and chronology. Many apologies to Jeff in this regard.

It’s my hope that this list, and other material at the Making History site, will be a catalyst for future classes on the craft of writing history, particularly experimental history:

Books:

Robert Darnton’s The Great Cat Massacre
Vanessa Schwartz’ Spectacular Realities
Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City
Mary Beard’s The Parthenon
Natalie Z. Davis’ The Return of Martin Guerre
Jonathan Spence’s The Death of Woman Wang
Lynn Hunt’s Inventing Human Rights
Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indian
Perry Anderson’s Spectrum

Articles:

Urban History, “Icons” issue multimedia companion
Mike Davis’ “The Flames of New York”
Jane Kamensky’s “Our Buildings, Our Selves”
Laura Mitchell’s “Beyond Tense: Encouraging Historians to Think Hard about Writing and Reading”
Martha Hodes’ “A House in Vermont, a Caribbean Beach: Beckoned by landscapes beyond the archive”
Jon Wiener’s “The Weatherman’s Temptation”
Mary Beard’s “A Don’s Life” blogposts
Hanchao Lu’s “The Art of History: A Conversation with Jonathan Spence”
Greg Grandin’s “Toward a Global New Deal”
Jill Lepore’s “No More Kings”
Martha Nussbaum’s “Body of the Nation”
Pankaj Mishra’s “Impasse in India”