| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Computers, Visualization, and History: How New Technology Will Transform Our Understanding of the Past. By David J. Staley. (Armonk: Sharpe, 2003. xiv, 174 pp. Cloth, $56.95, ISBN 0-7656-1094-9. Paper, $22.95, ISBN 0-7656-1095-7.)

Teaching History in the Digital Classroom. By D. Antonio Cantu and Wilson J. Warren. (Armonk: Sharpe, 2003. xiv, 361 pp. Cloth, $68.95, ISBN 0-7656-0992-4. Paper, $26.95, ISBN 0-7656-0993-2.)

Computers have established a comfortable and useful niche in historical study for their communication and word-processing capabilities. The authors of the two works under review here argue that the role of the computer can and should be expanded in ways that will benefit historians and their audiences while potentially reshaping the work of historians. The two books take sharply different tacks. David J. Staley's Computers, Visualization, and History calls on historians to restructure historical study to take advantage of the untapped potential of computers to present information and ideas visually. D. Antonio Cantu and Wilson J. Warren, in Teaching History in the Digital Classroom, show historians how to adapt the Internet to traditional classroom instruction.

In Computers, Visualization, and History, Staley argues that the real power of the computer lies in its graphics power rather than in its word-processing function. He wants his colleagues to add "visualizations" to the arsenal of historical interpretation and place them on an equal footing with the profession's preference for linear, narrative presentations. Staley does not enter directly into recent debates about the theoretical limits of the printed word to reflect the past. Instead, he connects the importance of visualizations to longstanding concerns of historians who agree with Thomas Carlyle's observation in 1830 that "'Narrative is linear, Action is solid'" (p. 13; italics in original). The bulk of Computers, Visualization, and History is devoted to the technical potential of computer software to present a more realistic history by reflecting the solidity of past action. All that is missing, according to Staley, is the willingness of historians to use graphics software to think and present their findings in nonlinear ways.

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