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Review

The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method, by Marc Trachtenberg. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 266 pages. $19.95, paper.

This comprehensive guide for writing international history reflects Marc Trachtenberg's mastery of a field about which he has written for more than four decades. It is intended for graduate students and advanced undergraduates in history and political science classes. In addition to his focus on the use of original sources and the critical analysis and interpretation of historical texts, Trachtenberg explains how to formulate and answer questions about the evidence and how to place these questions into a broader conceptual framework.

Trachtenberg is a historian who works extensively with political scientists, and this book reflects his concern with the connections between diplomatic history and international relations theory as a means of bringing questions into focus. As diplomatic historians have begun to utilize theory more extensively, it is crucial that political science students understand the relevance of studying history, and that history students perceive the relation–ship between historical analysis and theory. Trachtenberg uses specific examples from the First and Second World Wars to illustrate this approach.

Unlike most guides for students, which provide useful indexes, periodicals, bibliographic surveys, as well as internet sources, Trachtenberg provides this information, along with an extensive explanation of the methodology of how to analyze historical secondary literature, as well as how to determine the most influential works in a field. For example, his practical advice is to read extensive survey or review articles as a way to save time, and he lists the most important collections in history and political science. He alerts students that the first few pages of journal articles often place the core argument within the current ideas in the field, and he demonstrates ways in which students can benefit from books of historical synthesis.

To illustrate how to identify and evaluate the central argument of a text, he examines three examples in some depth: A. J. P. Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War, Fritz Fischer's argument about Germany's role in the origins of World War I, and Richard Neustadt's analysis of the Skybolt affair of 1962. He explains how to identify the central argument of a book, and to assess critically the internal argument as well as the documentation. Throughout these critical studies, he emphasizes the importance of a conceptual framework. Using this methodology and applying international relations theories, Trachtenberg then devotes a chapter to evaluating the historical literature on the events of 1941, and how they apply to America's entry into World War II. Trachtenberg thoroughly probes the historiographic debate from the German, Japanese, and American perspectives.

The same approach is employed to prepare students to use primary documents. Using a multitude of diplomatic history examples, Trachtenberg explains how to ask questions of the evidence, assess the reliability and motives of the sources, measure the historical reality of incomplete records, and develop a structure for the historical problem. Using specific events, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, he presents ways to discern which documents will be most useful for understanding the thinking of key political and military leaders, beginning with government documents and proceeding to diaries and private correspondence collections. Issues of reliability are discussed by comparing the British and American minutes of the Potsdam Conference of 1945. In keeping with recent trends in multi-archival research, Trachtenberg does not confine his practical advice on doing research in government sources to American archives.

The chapter on creating the written product offers advice on using evidence not for its own sake, but to ask fundamental questions, make an overarching argument, and create connections. This is the least useful chapter. The discussion is general, not specific to writing international history, and it contains the same advice that is found in the style books that Trachtenberg cites.

The extensive appendices offer indispensable up-to-date listings that are specific to the writing of diplomatic history. The sections on on-line resources will be valuable to established, as well as beginning, scholars.

Trachtenberg achieves his goals of demystifying historical research and sparing scholars just beginning in the field from the inefficient means that he used as a young scholar. This book goes a long way toward explaining the process of writing international history. While the extensive examples might be too involved and some of the points too repetitious for undergraduate courses and perhaps some graduate seminars, these same examples will certainly prove useful to instructors in these courses. For students at the doctoral level in international history, the book will be quite valuable and accessible.


California State University, Long Beach	Arlene Lazarowitz

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