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Synopsis
Bringing together E.P. Thompson's writings and lectures delivered over a number of years, Making History covers the key debates in history and cultural theory that occupied Thompson throughout his career. Making History includes such landmark writings as Thompson's influential and sympathetic assessments of the historians Raymond Williams and Herbert Gutman, as well as his judgements of the lasting value of classic English writers such as William Morris and Mary Wollstonecraft. Also included are Thompson's perceptive and always witty contributions to current issues of debate, such as the role of poetry as a political act and the historical method and imagination. The book concludes with "Agenda for Radical History," Thompson's inspiring and oft-cited lecture on the future of history and the task of historians in years to come, a fitting conclusion to the book and to Thompson's own exemplary career.
Publishers Weekly
The point of history, according to the late English historian Thompson, is to ``reconstruct the forgotten norms, decode the obsolete rituals and detect the hidden gesture,'' and for him that meant social history. The chronicling of wars and the actions of the ruling class interested him much less than the customs, folklore, practices and popular culture of nations, above all England. He was drawn to the plight of women and of the common people, particularly to the English working class, which he attempted to rescue from ``the condescension of posterity.'' In his view, history should be told from the bottom up rather than from the top down. But to dismiss him as a revisionist, left-wing historian would be unfair. He was too humane and multifaceted for that, and he found the theoretical arguments of Marxists boring, their concern with class tedious. Historical materialism and power relationships may not be the only lenses through which to view events. Whether he was reviewing the books of other historians such as Linda Colley or Herbert Gutman, or analyzing the contributions of Tom Maguire, Eleanor Marx, William Morris or Mary Wollstonecraft (``one of the greatest of Englishwomen''), Thompson wrote with a controlling integrity as well as great spirit. And he always delivered the long view, not pressing his nose ``too close against the windowpane'' but earnestly trying to stand back far enough to see the entire picture. (Jan.)