Popularizing the Past

"Nick Witham investigates how widely popular history books have gotten written, promoted, and institutionalized. Not just a matter of writing style, popular accessibility is also a product of an author's frame of mind, the editor's skill, and the publisher's marketing acumen, among other factors. Witham has done extensive work not just in historians' archives but in publishers' files. His primary subjects are Richard Hofstadter, Daniel Boorstin, John Hope Franklin, Gerda Lerner, and Howard Zinn-all popular historians who were explicitly concerned with the question of popularity. Collectively, they reveal the cross-influences of popular history writing and American popular culture"--