Ironically, the more intensive and far-reaching a historian's research, the greater the difficulty of citation. As the mountain of material grows, so does the possibility of error.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Research can be a big clunker. It's difficult to know how you can make the historical light.
It can be a long gap between the emergence of fully researched historical biographies.
The quarrel of the sociologists with the historians is that the latter have learned so much about how to do it that they have forgotten what to do. They have become so skilled in finding facts that they have no use for the truths that would make the facts worth finding.
I am a historian. I do a lot of research, and I try to get it right.
Unfortunately, historians have become so absorbed in detailed research that they have tended to neglect the job of building larger-scale maps of the past.
I feel slightly uneasy at the way historians are consulted as if history is going to repeat itself. It never does.
Historians will handle a much wider range of sources than a biographer and will be covering a broader spectrum of events, time, peoples.
History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.
Most biographers are apt to be discouraged by the sheer volume of papers left behind by their subject.
I remember when I was in school I had this teacher give me this E.L. Doctorow quote: They asked him how much historical research he does for his books and he said, 'As little as possible.' So I try and adhere to that.
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