Why don't real historians write popular works?
I know in some cases popular history and biography are produced by real historians, but the lively discussion on this list about the failings of popular writers in the history of computing gives me the impression that the field of battle has been left to the pithy and the superficial. Is this community sniping from the hilltops, hoping that the writers down on the mass-market battlefield will march up with a white flag, an acknowledgment, and a pledge to respect real scholarship? If real historians charged down the hill with a barrage of their own popular histories, wouldn't that overwhelm the errant? Just askin'. Bill
Those pondering the challenges and possible unwinnability of this war may possibly draw inspiration, or at least solace, from a modern classic article in the history of science: David Philip Miller, "The 'Sobel Effect': The Amazing Tale of How Multitudes of Popular Writers Pinched All the Best Stories in the History of Science and Became Rich and Famous while Historians Languished in Accustomed Poverty and Obscurity, and how this Transformed the World. A Reflection on a Publishing Phenomenon". /Metascience/ 11 (2002), 185-200. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02914819 (subscription) Best James On 08/10/2014 18:21, McMillan, William W wrote:
I know in some cases popular history and biography are produced by real historians, but the lively discussion on this list about the failings of popular writers in the history of computing gives me the impression that the field of battle has been left to the pithy and the superficial. Is this community sniping from the hilltops, hoping that the writers down on the mass-market battlefield will march up with a white flag, an acknowledgment, and a pledge to respect real scholarship?
If real historians charged down the hill with a barrage of their own popular histories, wouldn't that overwhelm the errant?
Just askin'.
Bill
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This is my new favorite title. P On Oct 8, 2014, at 15:55 , James Sumner <james.sumner@manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
David Philip Miller, "The 'Sobel Effect': The Amazing Tale of How Multitudes of Popular Writers Pinched All the Best Stories in the History of Science and Became Rich and Famous while Historians Languished in Accustomed Poverty and Obscurity, and how this Transformed the World. A Reflection on a Publishing Phenomenon".
___________________________ Paul N. Edwards Professor of Information and History, University of Michigan A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010) Terse replies are deliberate (and better than nothing) University of Michigan School of Information 4437 North Quad 105 S. State Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285 (734) 764-2617 (office) (206) 337-1523 (fax) pne.people.si.umich.edu
I'm willing to let it go, and be happy that this story is getting out, even if imperfectly. Heck, I was chastised for spelling Sergey Brin as "Sergei" in one of my publications, although in my defense a Russian scholar at my office says it was OK. I really want to see what Hollywood does with this story. They botched the Jobs biopic, but it looks like they are going to do a good job with Alan Turing. Let'e hope for the best. I am sure you've heard the story that, even if Hollywood picks up your script, by the time it appears on screen the only words of your script that they will have kept are "and" and "the." That story was repeated to me by a person who had a novel made into a movie, and who otherwise was very enthusiastic about a film about the ENIAC. By the way -- I knew Strobe Talbot, but it was a long, long time ago. He was a classmate of George W. at Yale, and editor of the Yale Daily News, back when being a newspaper editor meant something. I recall that, unlike W., he did not get tapped for Skull & Bones, which was somewhat of a scandal at the time. Paul ________________________________________ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of James Sumner [james.sumner@manchester.ac.uk] Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2014 3:55 PM To: members@sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Why don't real historians write popular works? Those pondering the challenges and possible unwinnability of this war may possibly draw inspiration, or at least solace, from a modern classic article in the history of science: David Philip Miller, "The 'Sobel Effect': The Amazing Tale of How Multitudes of Popular Writers Pinched All the Best Stories in the History of Science and Became Rich and Famous while Historians Languished in Accustomed Poverty and Obscurity, and how this Transformed the World. A Reflection on a Publishing Phenomenon". Metascience 11 (2002), 185-200. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02914819 (subscription) Best James On 08/10/2014 18:21, McMillan, William W wrote: I know in some cases popular history and biography are produced by real historians, but the lively discussion on this list about the failings of popular writers in the history of computing gives me the impression that the field of battle has been left to the pithy and the superficial. Is this community sniping from the hilltops, hoping that the writers down on the mass-market battlefield will march up with a white flag, an acknowledgment, and a pledge to respect real scholarship? If real historians charged down the hill with a barrage of their own popular histories, wouldn't that overwhelm the errant? Just askin'. Bill _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org<mailto:members@sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
There is another reason why historians don't write popular books, a fear of being labelled a synthesizer by one's colleagues. Admittedly, that may be partially due to jealousy at the publicity and income of a best seller, but it is a real issue especially within the reward structures (such as they exist) of universities. I think the converse is true, that we should try to reach wider audiences. Jonathan On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 3:33 PM, Ceruzzi, Paul <CeruzziP@si.edu> wrote:
I'm willing to let it go, and be happy that this story is getting out, even if imperfectly. Heck, I was chastised for spelling Sergey Brin as "Sergei" in one of my publications, although in my defense a Russian scholar at my office says it was OK. I really want to see what Hollywood does with this story. They botched the Jobs biopic, but it looks like they are going to do a good job with Alan Turing. Let'e hope for the best. I am sure you've heard the story that, even if Hollywood picks up your script, by the time it appears on screen the only words of your script that they will have kept are "and" and "the." That story was repeated to me by a person who had a novel made into a movie, and who otherwise was very enthusiastic about a film about the ENIAC.
By the way -- I knew Strobe Talbot, but it was a long, long time ago. He was a classmate of George W. at Yale, and editor of the Yale Daily News, back when being a newspaper editor meant something. I recall that, unlike W., he did not get tapped for Skull & Bones, which was somewhat of a scandal at the time.
Paul ________________________________________ From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [members-bounces@sigcis.org] on behalf of James Sumner [james.sumner@manchester.ac.uk] Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2014 3:55 PM To: members@sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Why don't real historians write popular works?
Those pondering the challenges and possible unwinnability of this war may possibly draw inspiration, or at least solace, from a modern classic article in the history of science:
David Philip Miller, "The 'Sobel Effect': The Amazing Tale of How Multitudes of Popular Writers Pinched All the Best Stories in the History of Science and Became Rich and Famous while Historians Languished in Accustomed Poverty and Obscurity, and how this Transformed the World. A Reflection on a Publishing Phenomenon". Metascience 11 (2002), 185-200. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02914819 (subscription)
Best James
On 08/10/2014 18:21, McMillan, William W wrote:
I know in some cases popular history and biography are produced by real historians, but the lively discussion on this list about the failings of popular writers in the history of computing gives me the impression that the field of battle has been left to the pithy and the superficial. Is this community sniping from the hilltops, hoping that the writers down on the mass-market battlefield will march up with a white flag, an acknowledgment, and a pledge to respect real scholarship?
If real historians charged down the hill with a barrage of their own popular histories, wouldn't that overwhelm the errant?
Just askin'.
Bill
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org<mailto:members@sigcis.org>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
Thanks for that reference, James, I just read the article. Notable for this listserv: Miller's main example of a popular book by a scholar is Jon Agar's "Turing and the Universal Machine": "Agar is able even in short, accessible compass to avoid the pitfalls of technological determinism and convey a quite sophisticated picture of the drivers and processes of technological innovation. He also manages to be entertaining" (26). Janet On Oct 8, 2014, at 3:55 10PM, James Sumner wrote:
Those pondering the challenges and possible unwinnability of this war may possibly draw inspiration, or at least solace, from a modern classic article in the history of science:
David Philip Miller, "The 'Sobel Effect': The Amazing Tale of How Multitudes of Popular Writers Pinched All the Best Stories in the History of Science and Became Rich and Famous while Historians Languished in Accustomed Poverty and Obscurity, and how this Transformed the World. A Reflection on a Publishing Phenomenon". Metascience 11 (2002), 185-200. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02914819 (subscription)
Best James
On 08/10/2014 18:21, McMillan, William W wrote:
I know in some cases popular history and biography are produced by real historians, but the lively discussion on this list about the failings of popular writers in the history of computing gives me the impression that the field of battle has been left to the pithy and the superficial. Is this community sniping from the hilltops, hoping that the writers down on the mass-market battlefield will march up with a white flag, an acknowledgment, and a pledge to respect real scholarship?
If real historians charged down the hill with a barrage of their own popular histories, wouldn't that overwhelm the errant?
Just askin'.
Bill
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
Hmm. Good question Bill. Here are some possible answers to the question "Why don't real historians write popular works?" 1) Most academic history books are written for tenure and promotion, not because anyone wants to read them. A peer reviewed book with a leading university press counts for a lot; a book with a trade press counts for less. So the incentives are not there. Also we spend too much time acknowledging uncertainty, citing and discussing previous work, etc. Not doing those things would make the book look unserious to hiring, tenure, or promotion committees. 2) The worlds of journalism and authorship have imploded. A lot of highly qualified writers are trying to earn a living writing non-fiction. A trade press will look for a track record with popular books or at least writing mass market journalism for magazines. Historians don't usually have that. 3) It's higher risk. Academic press books aren't expected to sell in significant numbers are aren't marketed much. Most would-be popular books fail and are quickly remaindered. So an academic press book has a longer life and the sales bar is so low it's hard to really fail. If journalists could earn a living wage while taking 10 years to write a book that sells 700 copies a lot of them probably would. 4) It's too hard. We don't have the narrative skills or snappiness that good journalists have honed over decades. Also it takes a huge amount of tweeting, blogging, and self-promotion that we're not good at and don't have the stomach for. You think we spend all that time in the archives because we like talking to people? 5) We mostly pick topics that are inherently difficult to sell to a mass audience. Journalists would avoid those topics. 6) We take perspectives and craft narratives that don't fit the genre norms of popular history. Stories about "A, the B that Changed the World," "C, the Lone Genius Who Invented D," etc. are proven to work. So are stories focused on personalities, and bold claims about how one particular historical event or person created the world we live in. Perspectives that scholarly historians learn to disdain as whiggish or presentist are common in popular histories. So basically a popular history isn't an academic history that sells more books. It's a different genre, written to different rules and published by a different kind of press. Academic presses do have the occasional breakout hit, but mostly with topics of interest to an interdisciplinary academic audience (e.g. cultural theory), very broad interest (e.g. presidents & founding fathers) or an enthusiast community (e.g. civil war books). Best wishes, Tom -----Original Message----- From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of McMillan, William W Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2014 12:21 PM To: members Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Why don't real historians write popular works? I know in some cases popular history and biography are produced by real historians, but the lively discussion on this list about the failings of popular writers in the history of computing gives me the impression that the field of battle has been left to the pithy and the superficial. Is this community sniping from the hilltops, hoping that the writers down on the mass-market battlefield will march up with a white flag, an acknowledgment, and a pledge to respect real scholarship? If real historians charged down the hill with a barrage of their own popular histories, wouldn't that overwhelm the errant? Just askin'. Bill _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
I think Tom is really quite right--and thoughtful. I have written a number of business management books published by trade houses, such as by McGraw-Hill and learned that for such books I needed a different writing style than for the books I did with Oxford or Princeton, for example. They needed less discussion about theories or what others wrote, more declarative sentences, absolute statements, and shorter story lines. I have such a book coming out at the end of the year from Wiley that I think is thoughtful and certainly based on a lot of work that is not exposed in the book because I really needed to deliver my messages in less than 250 big text pages. On the other hand, those kinds of books routinely sell between 3,000 and 10,000 copies, never get reviewed in academic journals, but did pay for my children's college education. Well done Tom. I liked your blunt, honest analysis. Just for the record, however, I value academic books a lot more than most trade books on history, economics, or politics. On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 4:39 PM, Thomas Haigh <thaigh@computer.org> wrote:
Hmm. Good question Bill. Here are some possible answers to the question "Why don't real historians write popular works?"
1) Most academic history books are written for tenure and promotion, not because anyone wants to read them. A peer reviewed book with a leading university press counts for a lot; a book with a trade press counts for less. So the incentives are not there. Also we spend too much time acknowledging uncertainty, citing and discussing previous work, etc. Not doing those things would make the book look unserious to hiring, tenure, or promotion committees. 2) The worlds of journalism and authorship have imploded. A lot of highly qualified writers are trying to earn a living writing non-fiction. A trade press will look for a track record with popular books or at least writing mass market journalism for magazines. Historians don't usually have that. 3) It's higher risk. Academic press books aren't expected to sell in significant numbers are aren't marketed much. Most would-be popular books fail and are quickly remaindered. So an academic press book has a longer life and the sales bar is so low it's hard to really fail. If journalists could earn a living wage while taking 10 years to write a book that sells 700 copies a lot of them probably would. 4) It's too hard. We don't have the narrative skills or snappiness that good journalists have honed over decades. Also it takes a huge amount of tweeting, blogging, and self-promotion that we're not good at and don't have the stomach for. You think we spend all that time in the archives because we like talking to people? 5) We mostly pick topics that are inherently difficult to sell to a mass audience. Journalists would avoid those topics. 6) We take perspectives and craft narratives that don't fit the genre norms of popular history. Stories about "A, the B that Changed the World," "C, the Lone Genius Who Invented D," etc. are proven to work. So are stories focused on personalities, and bold claims about how one particular historical event or person created the world we live in. Perspectives that scholarly historians learn to disdain as whiggish or presentist are common in popular histories.
So basically a popular history isn't an academic history that sells more books. It's a different genre, written to different rules and published by a different kind of press. Academic presses do have the occasional breakout hit, but mostly with topics of interest to an interdisciplinary academic audience (e.g. cultural theory), very broad interest (e.g. presidents & founding fathers) or an enthusiast community (e.g. civil war books).
Best wishes,
Tom
-----Original Message----- From: members-bounces@sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces@sigcis.org] On Behalf Of McMillan, William W Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2014 12:21 PM To: members Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Why don't real historians write popular works?
I know in some cases popular history and biography are produced by real historians, but the lively discussion on this list about the failings of popular writers in the history of computing gives me the impression that the field of battle has been left to the pithy and the superficial. Is this community sniping from the hilltops, hoping that the writers down on the mass-market battlefield will march up with a white flag, an acknowledgment, and a pledge to respect real scholarship?
If real historians charged down the hill with a barrage of their own popular histories, wouldn't that overwhelm the errant?
Just askin'.
Bill
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- James W. Cortada Senior Research Fellow Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota jcortada@umn.edu 608-274-6382
participants (8)
-
Ceruzzi, Paul -
James Cortada -
James Sumner -
Janet Abbate -
Jonathan Coopersmith -
McMillan, William W -
Paul N. Edwards -
Thomas Haigh