Not By Fact Alone

Not By Fact Alone

John Clive

In this collection of essays, the author demonstrates that while reading the great historians of the past, such as Gibbon, de Tocqueville, Carlyle, Macaulay, Michelet, Halevy, Marx and Burckhardt, is part of a complete education, history can also be great literature. Professor Clive’s assumption is that history is an art, not a science and that the great historians have usually been supremely gifted writers as well as scholars. They have also often been prophets and sages, mediating general views of the world to their readers. The author has also written “Macaulay – The Shaping of the Historian” which won the National Book Award for History.

This book consists of essays on master historians including Thomas Babington Macaulay; Edward Gibbon; Thomas Carlyle; Jules Michelet; Alexis de Tocqueville; and other topics. The author underlines the importance of Marx’s artful use of language, Carlyle’s gift for capturing the flow of history in time, Gibbon’s humor and his creation of a benevolent conspiracy between the reader and himself, Macaulay’s ability to propel inert facts into motion, and the literary artistry of other great historians. The great historians created suspense, balanced background and foreground, and enabled readers to feel like actual participants in, as well as observers of, events large and small — and at times acted as prophets and sages, opening up to their readers fresh, sometimes radical, views of the world and of man’s place in it. The author describes what he sees as the threat to the art of narrative history brought on by the complexities of social history, and parodies the misplaced use of computer techniques in current writings; the works of truly great historians should be, he believes, not only part of a true education but also the source of great and continuous pleasure.

This is a collector’s book in terms of look, content and age. It is written by a writer for  writers and readers