| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

"Closer to the Truth Than Any Fact": Memoir, Memory, and Jim Crow. By Jennifer Jensen Wallach. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008. xii, 176 pp. $34.95, ISBN 978-0-8203-3069-3.)
"Closer to the Truth Than Any Fact" is a quietly but uncommonly ambitious work. In it, Jennifer Jensen Wallach ponders the value and uses of autobiographies, a subject that most historians probably have given little thought. In a nutshell, she argues that historians need to refine a methodology for systematically using autobiographies, and by doing so historians will advance their efforts to understand the emotional content of past lives. In other words, autobiographies are an essential tool in our quest to develop empathy with our historical subjects.	1
In two concise, articulate chapters Wallach surveys the surprisingly sparse scholarly literature on autobiographies. Her review of the theoretical literature on autobiography is refreshingly lucid and cogent. It should stand as a valuable primer for graduate students and faculty alike. Although they seldom have a coherent methodological framework when consulting autobiographies, historians nonetheless sprinkle their writings with colorful passages drawn from these works. Most historians use these passages to leaven generalizations, but they too often ignore the specific perspective and subjectivity of the autobiographies' authors. Consequently, historians fail to exploit what is arguably the most notable opportunity that autobiographies provide—"to connect empathetically with past historical agents and cultivate an emotional understanding of different historical eras" (p. 9).	. . .

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