| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 92.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud—American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin. By Peter Charles Hoffer. (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004. xvi, 287 pp. $26.00, ISBN 1-58648-244-0.)

In Past Imperfect, "a book about history for nonhistorians" (p. x), Peter Charles Hoffer seeks to locate the recent, well-publicized depredations of several famous historians in a larger historical and intellectual context. In so doing, Hoffer strives to illuminate the forces that led admired historians to glaring ethical and scholarly lapses and to "explain to people who love to read history how the history profession has fallen into disarray and controversy" (ibid.). Whatever one makes of the latter judgment, Hoffer's desire to historicize recent debates about the discipline is commendable.

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