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U.S. history enjoys a renaissance

2007-06-06 10:52:40

By Daniel Trotta Tue May 29 2007, 7:16 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In a high-tech age of instant communication, old-fashioned

history is enjoying a renaissance in U.S. popular culture.

History tomes crowd best-seller lists. Historical documentaries fill the

airwaves. And people pay thousands of dollars to spend whole weekends with

noted historians, much the way rock-n-roll or baseball fans attend fantasy

camps with their heroes.

"At all levels of American society there is this hunger to understand the past

and relate it to the present," historian David Nasaw said at one such event.

"The people who are fascinated reach from the top income bracket to ordinary

folk."

Nasaw, who won the 2007 American History Book Prize for his biography of Andrew

Carnegie, was a star attraction at a weekend fundraiser for the New York

Historical Society, which raised more than $1.5 million from patrons who

donated at least

$5,000.

Others holding court were Richard Brookhiser, known for his biographies of the

U.S. founders; Josiah Bunting, a biographer of Ulysses Grant; Civil War

historian Eric Foner; Jill Lepore, author of a book about the King Philip's War

between American Indians and English colonists; and Sean Wilentz, who

questioned in a 2006 Rolling Stone article whether George W. Bush was the worst

president ever.

"You're sitting next to people who have written the great books in history,"

said Michael Weisberg, a fund manager with ING Group who attended the event.

So what is the attraction?

Some experts attribute the surge to troubled times and the polarization of U.S.

politics, which has guided people who are looking for answers to history.

Others say the prose of history writers has grown more compelling than text

books of the past.

MARKET POWER OF HISTORY

Book sales are creating a class of celebrity historians such as David

McCullough, who won Pulitzer Prizes for his biographies of John Adams and Harry

Truman.

His book "1776" led the non-fiction bestseller list as a hardcover 2005 with

1.2 million copies sold, then was the second on the bestseller list as a

paperback in 2006 with 284,000 copies sold, according to data from Nielsen

BookScan.

Nathanial Philbrick's "Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War" was

the bestselling non-fiction book of 2006 with 296,000 copies sold.

Overall, history books sold 14.6 million copies in 2006, up 6.6 percent from

2006, Nielsen BookScan reported.

The late Stephen Ambrose showed the market power of history when his "Band of

Brothers" was converted into a television miniseries that still replays around

the world.

"The McCulloughs and the Ambroses have trail-blazed a new category with the

clear accessibility of their prose. It's written as narrative. It's written as

drama," said Bob Weil, an editor at W.W. Norton.

Literary agent John Taylor "Ike" Williams of Kneerim and Williams links the

fascination with history to rising passions surrounding modern politics.

"It's become a very polarized country ever since Vietnam and the Civil Rights

movement. So there's a major division, and the people are very interested in

reading about that division because they are wedded to one side or the other,"

Williams said.

At the New York Historical Society event, captains of industry and Wall Street

power players crowded around to hear historian Sven Beckert deliver an ode to

the wonders of New York's mercantile records from centuries past and actor Sam

Waterston read Lincoln's second inaugural address.

For Carl Menges, retired vice president of investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin &

Jenrette, one of the allures of history was the steeliness of figures like

Lincoln compared with the leaders of today.

"Are we groping for excellence and great leadership?" he asked.