The Modern Researcher, by Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graff

The Modern Researcher, by Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graff, is a guide written for graduate students of history on researching and composing research reports.#

I. Principles and Methods#

Chapter 1: Research and Report#

A great quote on the applicability of this work outside the field of history:

[As] the philosopher William James pointed out, history is the great humanizer:

You can give humanistic value to almost anything by teaching it historically. Geology, economics, mechanics, are humanities when taught with reference to the successive achievements of the geniuses to which these sciences owe their being. Not taught thus, literature remains grammar, art a catalogue, history a list of dates, and natural science a sheet of formulas and weights and measures. [p. 9]

Chapter 2: The ABC of Technique#

More on the purpose of writing and how that purpose should effect what you write and how you write it:

Any account, report, or other piece of serious factual writing is intended to take effect on someone at some time. It must consequently meet that someone's demands. Those demands can for convenience be summed up in a pair of questions: Is the account true, reliable, complete? Is it clear, orderly, easy to grasp and remember? All the devices and methods that the researcher combines under the name of technique exist to satisfy these requirements? [p. 14]

Apart from the purpose of writing is the purpose of your writing:

[Your] subject is defined by that group of associated gacts and ideas which, when clearly presented in a prescribed amount of space, leave no questions unsanswered WITHIN the presentation, even though many questions could be asked OUTSIDE it. [p. 16]

Chapter 6: Handling Ideas#

This chapter contained a correction of a common quote. The context was the subtlety of ideas and quotes.

Lord Acton does not say, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"; he says, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." (Letter to Bishop Creighton in Acton, Historical Essays and Studies, London, 1907, 504) A slight but consequential difference,

for it allows the possibility that a business executive or a public officeholder will not be corrupted by wielding power. [p. 148]

Chapter 8: Pattern, Bias, and Materialism#

A fabulous quote in the section on Bias:

"Impartiality is a dream and honesty a duty. We cannot be impartial, but we can be intellectually honest." - Gaetano Salvemini [p. 187]

II. Writing, Speaking, and Publishing#

Chapter 9: Organizing#

A fabulous paragraph of differentiating yourself from the rest of the herd:

If your first words are "This book..." they will not be able to distinguish your review from twenty others, and they will be entitled to conclude that you have not expended much thought on enlisting their attention. The opening statement takes the readers from where they presumably stand in point of knowledge and brings them to the book under review. The briefest possible description of its aim, scope, and place in the world therefore follows the baited opening sentence and completes the first paragraph. [p. 221]

Chapter 10: Plain Words#

More on the style of writing, respecting your reader, and thinking about what you write:

Jargon, clichés, and tricks of speech, as you can see, are not simply sets of words or faults of writing, but forms of escape. They denote a failure of courage, an emotional weakness, a shuffling refusal to be pinned down to a declaration. The cowardice come out on paper like fingerprints at the site of the crime. [p. 240]

Chapter 15: Modes of Presentation#

A concise list of research advice:

1. Do not wait until you have gathered all your material before starting to write.

2. Do not be afraid of writing down something that you think may have to be changed.

3. Do not hesitate to write up in any order those sections of your total work that seem to have grown ripe in your mind.

4. Once you start writing, keep going. Resist the temptation to get up ad verify a fact. Leave it blank.

5. When you get stuck in the middle of a stretch of writing, reread your last two or three pages and see if continuity of thought will not propel you past dead center. [p. 387-388]

Preface to the Sixth Edition v Acknowledgments vii List of Figures xiii PART I Principles and Methods of Research 1 Research and Report: Characteristics

3 The Report: A Fundamental Form

3 The Historical Outlook Underlies Research and Report

5 Reporting History in Daily Life

5 The Past Is All-Inclusive

7 The Research Reporter and Scholar

8 Historical Writing: Its Origins and Demands

10 2 The ABC of Technique

15 The Prime Difficulty: What Is My Subject?

15 I Have All My Material—But Have You?

19 The Practical Imagination at Work

22 A Note Is First a Thought

26 Knowledge for Whom?

31 Hard Work Makes Royal Roads

34 3 Finding the Facts

37 The Detective and the Clues

37 Library and Internet

39 A Surfeit of Sources

45 Defining the Quarry

46 Cross-Questioning the Book

48 Professional Informants: Reference Books

51 Up-to-Date Reference Works

53 Contemporary Opinion Now and Earlier

59 Finding One's Peers and One's Ancestors

59 Facts and Numbers from Maps

62 What Else Do I Need?

63 4 Verification

67 How the Mind Seeks Truth

67 Collation, or Matching Copy with Source

70 Rumor, Legend, and Fraud

71 Falsification on the Increase

76

Attribution: Putting a Name to a Document79

Explication: Clearing Up Details in Manuscripts81

Destroying Myths

85 Identification: Giving Due Credit for Authorship

90 The Snare of Pseudonyms

97 5 Handling Ideas

101 Fact and Idea: An Elusive Distinction

101 Large Ideas as Facts of History

104 Technical Terms: All or None

105 The Technique of Self-Criticism

108 Reporters' Fallacies: How to Avoid Them

110 The Scholar and the Great Ideas

113 6 Truth, Causes, and Conditions

117 The Types of Evidence

117 Probability the Guide

122 Clio and the Doctors

127 Assertion versus Suggestion

131 Note Qualifiers in All Conclusions

133 Skepticism under Control

139 Subjective and Objective: The Right Meanings

142 Knowledge of Fact and Knowledge of Causes

144 On Cause and Measurement

146 7 Pattern, Bias, and Revisionism

149 The Reason of Historical Periods and Labels

149 The Conditions of Pattern-Making

151 The Sources of Bias and Its Correctives

153 The View from Inside

157 Revisionism Good and Bad

160 The Philosophy and "Laws" of History

161 PART II Writing, Speaking, and Publishing 8 Organizing: Paragraph, Chapter, and Part

169 The Function of Form and of Forms

169 The Steps in Organizing

174

The Chapter: Role, Size, and Title177

Composing: By Instinct or by Outline?179

Troubleshooting after Lapses

183 The Book Review and the Paragraph

188 9 Plain Words: The War on Jargon and Clichés

193 Keep Aware of Words

193 The State of the Language

195 Jargon: Origin and Sources

196 Be Strict about Signposts

198 Picture All Verbal Images

200 Decide Which Images Are Alive

203 Give Up Omnibus Words and Dressing Gowns

206 Observe Idiom and Implications

207 10 Clear Sentences: Emphasis, Tone, and Rhythm

211 Live Sentences for Lively Thoughts

211 Mismatching of Parts

214 Five-Legged Sheep and Other Monsters

216 Modern Prose: Its Virtues and Vices

218 Punctuating for Smooth Reading

222 Carpentry or Cabinetmaking?

224 The Sound of the Sense

229 11 The Arts of Quoting and Translating

235 Three Recurrent Tasks

235 The Philosophy of Quoting

236 The Mechanics of Quotation

239 Difficulties and Dangers of Translation

243 Dictionaries and "False Friends"

245 Literalism and Paraphrase

247 To Translate Is to "Carry Over"

249 12 The Rules of Citing: Footnotes and Bibliography

257 Types and Functions of Footnotes

257 Footnote Form and Forms

260

Footnoting: When, Where, How Much?266

The Bibliography: Varieties and Forms268

13 Revising for Printer and Public275

Errors and Their Ways275

Judging the Merits of a Work277

Revision: Maxims and Pointers279

Revision: Marks and Symbols280

The Professional Touch

281 The Handle to a Writer's Works

287 Revision: The Printer and You

289 The Final Pages: The Index

290 Copyright: To Protect and Defend

291 14 Modes of Presentation

293 Composing: By Hand or by Machine?

293 Advantages versus Drawbacks

293 A Few Rudiments for Beginners

295 The Whole Circle of Work: Editing a Classic

297 Speaking What You Have Learned

298 Heading Committees and Seminars

301 The Etiquette of Leadership

304 Making the Most of Time

305 A Few More Recommendations 309 InfoTrac® College Edition Terms 311 Index 313