Long before David Hackett Fischer gained fame for books like Albion's Seed, Paul Revere's Ride and Washington's Crossing, he wrote this guide on how NOT to write history. Using examples from histories both famous and obscure, Fischer illustrates a series of logical fallacies that could have been avoided. The only reason that I don't give it five stars is the turgid writing style.

Great critical thinking when it comes to historiography. The logic chopping is a little pedantic at times but the overall affect is greater clarity on how to reach responsible historical conclusions.

The problem however is that Fischer thinks historians should spend all their time answering "what" and "how" questions and avoid trying to answer "why" questions. Now "why" would he say that? Well he tells us. He says that the "why" questions deal with metaphysical issues that yield no fruitful or definitive results. Even if that is true, and I don't believe it is, the metaphysical questions are still the most interesting to beings who can't be reduced to the physical realm.

I don't believe that Fishcer's scientific "what-and-how-only-approach" is much better at producing certainty either. For instance, "what" kind of document is the Constitution of the United States and "how" did it come to be? Well, some say that it is primarily influenced by British Capitalism ("the pursuit of happiness"), others that its primarily influenced by French ideas of equality ("all men are created equal") , others that the classical idea of a well informed, upstanding citizenry is the primary influence ("the consent of the governed"), others say Christianity and the Puritan moral vision is still calling the shots ("endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights"). To complicate matters there are those who argue that the Constitution is a betrayal of the Declaration of Independence and others that it is basically faithful to it and still others who believe that it is an almost pure extension of its values.

"How" did it come into its final form is tricky as well, since fifty-five delegates operated behind closed doors and were hopelessly divided between two factions of independently minded men like Madison and Hamilton on one side and Sam Adams and Patrick Henry on the other with guys like Washington caught in the middle. To make this even more confusing, some think that Madison caved to the anti-federalists by drawing up the Bill of Rights and others that he was tossing them some hushpuppies to shut their mouths so that the Constitution would pass.

I also hope that this makes it clear that you may distinguish the "why" from the "what" and "how" and even "who" questions, but you will never separate it from those topics. What God has joined together, let no man, even a respectable historian, put asunder.

I had to read this in college, and I'll admit that it seemed terribly dry the first time around. After all, in those days I wanted to learn history - not pick apart someone's writing style. However, I found my copy recently while doing some cleaning and sorting, and sat down to read it again.

It really is a helpful book not just for reading and writing history, but for considering a whole host of subjects. The author does a good job of picking apart logical fallacies so that we can recognize them when we read a work more closely. It can make writing more intimidating, though, because I think it's impossible to read this book without worrying about how many of these issues might be infesting one's own work.

A rather enjoyable and provocative look at the "fallacies" of historians--- including some major names. What Fischer seems to mean by "fallacy" varies chapter to chapter, from suspect metaphors to ideological blinders to embarrassing anachronisms. Moreover, his examples of bad historical writing often seem idiosyncratic. Fischer criticises a bio of Calvin Coolidge called "A Puritan in Babylon" for the mix of images, but...the title seems to me to be immediately evocative and immediately comprehensible, whether or not 17th-c. English religious dissenter or a city in Mesopotamia are actually involved. Nonetheless, this is a nicely-done guide to common errors in historical writing, and very much worth reading.

Excerpt from my report:

Every so often, a work surfaces which attempts to redefine the boundaries of an idea or discipline. Einstein’s theory of relativity opened doors to new ways that physics could be perceived; Emile Durkheim infused a new validity into the study of sociology. Likewise, David Hackett Fischer’s Historians’ Fallacies seeks to do nothing less than change the way that history is understood by academics. Though noble in its cause, the book misses its mark: rather than expanding the possibilities of historical theory, as other revolutionaries have done in their respective disciplines, Fischer strives to narrow the spectrum of permissibility for what qualifies as acceptable historical research. What follows are a series of analyses and criticisms wherein Fischer often defies the regulations he has established elsewhere in the book. While Fischer’s criticism can serve as a useful guideline for historians, his restrictions are too severe to be followed absolutely.

The greatest ongoing problem in Fischer’s analysis is that when providing examples to condemn a particular historical fallacy, he commits another fallacy he has already warned against. In his critique of misplaced literalism, he reprimands historians who would literally interpret John Marshall’s claim that he idolized democracy. To substantiate his complaint, Fischer reasons, “A glance at the contours of John Marshall’s career suggests that he did not idolize Jeffersonian democracy, or Jacksonian democracy, or indeed democracy in any accepted meaning.” Here, Fischer has made an authoritative claim about John Marshall’s true meaning. As the book continues, however, Fischer introduces the “fallacy of the one-dimensional man”, wherein the historian “reduces the complex psychic condition of men merely to their political roles.” It appears, here, that Fischer has broken his own law. By claiming to know decisively what John Marshall’s mindset was, even as Marshall uttered a statement to the contrary, Fischer depicts Marshall as a political entity incapable of having contrasting or complex opinions. Furthermore, Fischer’s mentioned “glance” at the contours of Marshall’s career does not offer any sufficient or concrete evidence to refute the claim that Marshall idolized democracy. It is discourteous for the author to discredit an argument without providing any explicit evidence for doing so, and it invalidates his example.

In Fischer’s review of the fallacies of factual significance, he renounces what he calls the “furtive fallacy,” the idea that “reality is reduced to a set of shadows, flickering behind a curtain of flimsy rhetoric.” This fallacy would include the far-fetched conclusions of conspiracy theorists as well as, one can presume, a great number of journalists. While the furtive fallacy was rightfully introduced, Fischer seems to confuse misleading factual pronunciations with genuine historical interpretations. It is verifiably the case that many common historical narratives are fraught with hidden side-stories and questionable intentions. The narrative storyline of U.S. history which is commonly taught in schools excludes a great number of insidious details which are less palatable to the American public: the economic advantages offered by the constitution to its property-owning authors, for instance. Though it may be difficult to prove a conspiracy out of such facts, they deserve to be noted and explored with an array of possibilities. Fischer ought not to condemn the furtive fallacy outright, but rather to condemn it on the condition that it is not supported by facts. Provided a historian does not falsify information or arrive at unfounded conclusions, he should be permitted to deviate from the accepted understanding of an event and offer alternative explanations.

"That's a fallacy," some dolt says to you. You respond: "which one? there are over 200." The fallacies are all listed in the back, and they apply not only to history but just about everything. This is a key book to study for clear thinking on just about any subject.

David H. Fischer is not a man of diplomatic language: "historians are inexact scientists, who go blundering about their business without a sufficient sense of purpose or procedure. They are failed scientists, who have projected their failures to science itself. Nothing could be more absurd, or more nearly antithetical to the progress of a potent discipline ". Naturally Fischer here refers to the widespread dislike among historians of any theory of history and of the tendency to discern laws and structures in history. I understand that dislike though, because often theory is associated with such generalizations that any sound relationship to the reality of the past is lost; and the obsession to discover patterns, laws and structures in history regularly has amounted to inapt tunnel visions.

Fischer shares that concern. He turns out to be a thoroughbred empiricist who in his own history practice is very close to positivism. In this book the sarcastic comment on too speculative theories, syntheses and analyses is abundant, e.g. p 14: “In my opinion — and I may be a minority of one — that favorite adverb of historians should be consigned to the semantical rubbish heap. A 'why' question tends to become a metaphysical question. It is also an imprecise question, for the adverb 'why' is slippery and difficult to define. Sometimes it seeks a cause, sometimes a motive, sometimes a reason, sometimes a description, sometimes a process, sometimes a purpose, sometimes a justification. A 'why' question lacks direction and clarity; it dissipates a historian's energies and interests.”

But at the same time Fischer really believes in a sound science of history, a science that obviously must be founded empirically. “There are many more practicable adverbs — who, when, where, what, how — which are more specific and more satisfactory. Questions of this sort can be resolved empirically, and from them a skilled historian can construct a project with much greater sophistication, relevance, accuracy, precision, and utility, instead of wasting his time with metaphysical dilemmas raised by his profound 'why' questions, which have often turned out to be about as deep as the River Platte”.

In essence, Fischer is a very practical, pragmatic man: “history is, in short, a problem-solving discipline. A historian is someone who asks an open-ended question about past events and answers it with selected facts which are arranged in the form of an explanatory paradigm. These questions and answers are fitted to each other by a complex process of mutual adjustment. The resultant explanatory paradigm may take many different forms: a statistical generalization, or a narrative, or a causal model, or a motivational model, or a collectivized group-composition model, or maybe an analogy (…) always, it is articulated in the form of a reasoned argument” .

Fischer's logic of historical thought is essentially a very strict, rigorously applied methodology, without much consideration about the larger framework and the philosophical implications of the historical work. In other words, his book is very useful in this limited domain (regularly also extremely funny, though), but don’t expect more of it!

In the 50s and 60s of the twentieth century David Hackett Fischer was a renowned American historian who earned his spurs in the historiography of the United States. In 1970 he published this booklet in which he gives an almost exhaustive enumeration of the different types of methodological errors his colleagues of then and of the centuries before him have committed. As you can imagine the work caused a huge wave of indignation in the historical Guild. Of course, in itself his deed has something quite arrogant and pedantic. But Fischer didn't care: this booklet is written with so much authority, flair, wit and humor that the outrage can be seen as just petty reactions. Still, there are quite a few comments to be made on Fischer's approach. Fischer is an absolute empirist: historiography (and by extension all social sciences) can only be taken seriously if it is practised according to strictly empirical procedures; and this can be done only by asking the right questions and answering them according to a strict methodology (called “historical logic”). Fischer doesn’t dare to admit it anywhere, but with this starting point he puts himself in the pure positivist tradition.
The booklet is full of outrage against all speculative historiography à la Spengler and Toynbee (rightly so), but he also wipes all meta-history and narrative history of the table. This pure empiricism may be a very sound basis for any scientific activity and evolution, but excluding all more theoretical or artistic points of view seems to me – philosophically - rather dubious and not a fruitful way of addressing science. However, I have read this book with a lot of pleasure: it is full of practical, methodical tips that indeed are very useful in the historical work. A big drawback however is that Fischer illustrates his propositions almost only with American examples.

"How intriguing are the fallacies that lead men's minds astray." - Tarquin.

I find myself drawn to lists and examples and studies of logical, rhetorical, historiographical, and other types of fallacies, again and again. The main reason may be that so many of such fallacies are encountered so often on the internet, on blogs and forums, even those claiming to be the most reasonable, fair, and "logical," and in newspapers and television news programs, where they seem to have undergo random evolutionary mutation resulting in a tenfold multiplying of their birth-rate. Yes, news-heads, news-readers, and newspaper-writers are filled with fallacies and myths more than any other segment of society I know of. This is not to say that politicians are a distant second; the fact is that politicians' foot-in-mouth events are as likely to be caused by ignorance or even stupidity half the time, leaving logical fallacies to account for no more than half of their total self-exposures. So I want to be able to recognize those fallacies so I can understand how to identify the truths they distort, politically as well as academically.

A second reason, no less important than the first, maybe even more important, is so that I can avoid such fallacy-mongering myself, as much as possible. Does Fischer's book help me towards these two goals? I believe it does. While lists of fallacies abound on the internet, they are useful for discriminating individual statements. They work best when applied sentence by sentence, line by line. Fischer's book helps develop a way of thinking that allows one to undertake an extended reading, or a lengthy writing project, with a greater clarity, sharpness, and accuracy than has been demonstrated by many who do not have ventured into this arena of analysis and reasoning.

Rarely does a book about historians and their writings deserve such praise. But David Hackett Fisher deserves the rank of "public intellectual" based, I think, solely on this book. It is witty (I laughed outloud regularly), almost G. K Chestertonian. Most importantly of all, the book encourages people to think well, not in a way that attempts to know everything about everything, but in a way that knows something about something.

Dense, but disciplined.

Feels like common sense wrapped up in polysyllabic posturing.