The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History by GORDON S. WOODReview by: WALTER RUSSELL MEADForeign Affairs, Vol. 87, No. 5 (September/October 2008), p. 172Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20699330 .

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Recent Books

The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History, by Gordon s. wood.

Penguin Press, 2008,336 pp. $25.95. This collection of review essays by one of the United States' most well-read and most readable historians is at once a review

of 20 years of disputes and contentions in

American historiography and a defense of the discipline of history that is both subtle and forthright. Wood s review

essays, most of which originally appeared in The New York Review of Books and The

New Republic, cover works by some of the most notable (as well as the most

controversial) contemporary scholars

of U.S. history. The essays are generous even when they are devastating; they are

literate and provocative and in most cases

as fresh and relevant now as when they were written. Without casting aspersions on those political scientists and cultural critics who mine the past for the purpose of illuminating or critiquing the present,

Wood wants to stand up for those histo

rians who seek, so far as it is possible, to understand the past on its own terms.

Although skeptical of many trends among

historians, Wood recognizes the substantial

contributions that the last generation of

historians, focused largely on ethnic, gen

der, and cultural studies, have made to

our understanding of the American past.

arenas of political and economic develop ment. The book is strongest in its analysis of the colonial era and American history up to the Civil War: the narrative is coherent and well thought out and makes major contributions. The chapters dealing with later eras are unfortunately less successful; the subject is more complex, and the authors have been less able to integrate their different perspectives and areas of

research into a continuous narrative history. Nevertheless, even where the authors seem to lose their way, this is an extremely useful book that deserves attention.

Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History. by ted sorensen. Harper, 2008,

576 pp. $27.95. In his long-awaited memoirs, the John F.

Kennedy adviser, collaborator, and speech writer Sorensen balances two apparently

conflicting demands: he continues his

long record of unswerving loyalty to the charismatic president he served while

giving readers a full and rich sense of his own complex personality. To those who

challenge his objectivity as a chronicler

of the Kennedy era, Sorensen responds,

persuasively, that historians have one set

of duties but that his own duty of loyalty to the administration he served and to a

man he loved must come first. Even so, Sorensen has eschewed hagiography, and on the whole his account of his tragically brief time at Kennedy s side offers a rich and generally well-balanced, if perhaps not always objective and dispassionate,

description of a political career that elec

trified the nation.

This is also a strong and memorable

statement of faith in one of the classic

forms of American liberalism: a belief in the possibility of progress and in the

The Way ofthe Ship: Americas Maritime

History Reenvisioned, 1600-2000. by

alex roland, w. jeffrey

bolster, and alexander

keyssar. Wiley, 2007, 544 pp. $35.00. This useful book offers a comprehensive introduction in one volume to a vital but

little-known aspect of American history: the role played by maritime commerce in both the international and the domestic

[172] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume 87 No. 5

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