The Modern Researcher

Both authors, Jacquez Barzun and Henry Grafff are historians and are faculty members of capital of South Carolina University. They finished this take for by year 1969.THE BOOK- Summary and PurposeThis ledger is primarily int blockadeed to guide and instruct students in the arts of research and piece of writing(note on the revised edition), with special emphasis on historiography.The phonograph recording is divided into three parts, with the titles The First Principles, Research and Writing .The idea for the number unmatched principles is to lay down the needed frame of thought, the attitudes and qualifications of a (modern) researcher- apparently, to grapple him from an antiquated one.It combines both the technique of research and writing. Unlike common writing/research manuals that concentrate only on the how tos , Barzun & Graff, offered all the necessary ingredients for fine history writing that is based on fastidious try to search for the truth. It is a book on histori ography that develops the idea that facts only when do not constitute history but that these need to be interpreted and ably pen. Writing should consist an effort on the writer to communicate as close as possible his own ideas to the reader.It take a craps a very convenient outline summary for all the great philosophical systems that influenced historians and their writings. This background could further enhance an understanding of historians very human determination to reduce patterns into laws in order to make them coherent and unified. However, such laws also simplify phenomenon and , if possible, should be avoided by the writer.Barzun convincingly provides strong bases for his principles through excellent choice of examples. An anecdote on how a historian was able to take the authorship of the Diary of a Public Man is such a good example on how one investigates and verifies his data. This historian was able to accrue up with a probable answer to his problem through exer tion and error that took him more than thirty years- visiting libraries, interviewing key people mentioned in the diary, verifying documents written during the point in time in question (Lincoln Administration).In the end the historian found out that the author employed both fact and fiction in his diary entry and therefore this (diary) would not be useful as a historical document. Another is to the highest degree a researcher who investigated the founding of the guide intelligence agency In God We Trust written on dollar currencies. He noticed that there was a period when such a motto was absent, and he wanted to investigate, first -its origin and then, the reason for its absence then, its revival in the present currencies.Through scrupulous investigation he found out that it was Stuart Chase, the Secretary of Treasury who , universe a clergyman, mandated its inclusion on all currencies during his incumbency. When his term expired, his successor had this motto deleted only to reappear later when the American Congress saw the cognizance of restoring it. Such examples on the process of research reinforces the idea that research is a worthy endeavor and is indeed exciting.Moroever, the book stresses on the importance of having the straight-laced perspective in writing history, i.e. Book concentrates on principles of thought and analysis of difficulties and aims at imparting the fundamentals of informed exposition. The authors repeatedly expounds on these passim the book. Another important tenet which Barzun convinces his reader is that it is by way of chance that all scholars, including scientists can claim the truthfulness of their work.Thus, patterning in history is intend not to arrive at laws or generalizations that are unbreakable and unchangeable but quite to serve as guidepost that may give coherence to an ,otherwise, confusing motley of data. They are therefore do for convenience, undecomposed as periodizations in history are.The menacing issue on subjectivity and objectivity in historical writing was given adequate concern by Barzun. He avers that these words apply not to persons and opinions but rather to sensations and judgments and are better avoided by historians and their critics. An objective judgment is one made by testing in all ways possible ones subjective impressions, so as to arrive at a knowledge of subjects. A corollary principle will be that competence, not mass opinion, is decisive. There have been collective hallucinations that deceived large majorities (p.166). This obviously happens, specially with policy-making issues and with politicians who exploit public opinion to suit their ends. AnalysisBarzun & Graffs novel Researcher is, indeed, not an ordinary manual on research and writing. unless I have only one comment, why did they entitle the book The Modern Researcher? Nowhere in this book did they explain the title. Does the word modern means a historical period? Or a frame of mind? I would assume that the work being about historiography may connote a historical period. But it could also be a frame of mind, i.e. progressive and liberal.