Background
Comer Vann Woodward was born in Vanndale, Arkansas in 1908.
( In a career that has spanned more than half a century, ...)
In a career that has spanned more than half a century, C Vann Woodward has come to be regarded as one of the foremost historians of the United States. His writings on the South -- particularly on the period of the New South -- have inspired the admiration and awe of more than a generation of colleagues and students. Thinking Back is Woodward's retrospective view of his experience as a historian. Neither a personal nor an intellectual autobiography, it is a book in which Woodward describes -- through a consideration of his own books and the critical dialogue they have engendered -- how the history of the South was viewed and written during the early years fo the century, how those views hve changed over the decades, and the turbulent forces that have influenced revisions in interpretation, subject matter, and comprehension. Thinking Back is without precedent, a book thta could have been written by no one but Woodward himself.Woodward recalls the South of the 1930s, the formative period when the young man from rural Arkansas determined the course his life would take. He describes his university years at Emory and Chapel Hill (where he finished his first book, a biography of Georgia Populist Tom Watson), his early mentors, and the early misgivings he had about a career as a historian. He remembers the honor he felt on being asked, at the tender age of thirty, to write one of the volumes in the prestigious series A History of the South. That book, Origins of the New South -- more than twelve years in the making -- would become one of his most important contributions to southern historiography. Woodward describes his astonishment at the unexpected success of his seventh book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, which was written in the summer months of 1954, just after the Supreme Court's unanimous decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. He also relates the circumstances that, in the late 1950s, compelled him to write another of his more influential works, The Burden of Southern History.In each instance Woodward reflects on what he was trying to do in his books, what forces he was reacting against, what people events, and ideas influenced him, and how he now assesses his work. With candor and cordiality, he addresses his critics as colleagues rather than as adversaries, agreeing with some, debating with others, and venturing criticisms of his own work that they may have overlooked. He considers the perils of the historian as presentist, as ironist, as moralist, and as ideologue, and the risks of writing with conviction and passion on controversial subjects.Thinking Back is vintage Woodward. It is expertly crafted, admirably modulated, witty, and a delight to read. For readers of history interested in how the historian works, the risks he takes, the doubts that plague him, and the forces that move him, this book will have unique appeal. There is nothing else quite like it.
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(Book has been withdrawn from service from Library. Book h...)
Book has been withdrawn from service from Library. Book has the usual Library Stamps, Markings, Binding and other markings.Book has been withdrawn from service from Library. Book has the usual Library Stamps, Markings, Binding and other markings.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316953873/?tag=2022091-20
( C. Vann Woodward was one of the most prominent and resp...)
C. Vann Woodward was one of the most prominent and respected American historians of the twentieth century. He was also a very gifted and frequent writer of letters, from his earliest days as a young student in Arkansas and Georgia to his later days at Yale when he became one of the arbiters of American intellectual culture. For the first time, his sprightly, wry, sympathetic, and often funny letters are published, including those he wrote to figures as diverse as John Kennedy, David Riesman, Richard Hofstadter, and Robert Penn Warren. The letters shed new light not only on Woodward himself, but on what it meant to be an American radical and public intellectual, as well as on the complex politics and discourse of the historical profession and the anxious modulations of Southern culture.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300185340/?tag=2022091-20
Comer Vann Woodward was born in Vanndale, Arkansas in 1908.
He graduated from Emory University in 1930, earned his master's degree at Columbia University in 1932, and received his doctorate at the University of North Carolina in 1937.
As part of the requirements for the degree, Woodward chose to try the difficult art of historical biography and wrote his dissertation on Thomas Watson, a member of Georgia's liberal Populist movement who later became an editor known for his virulently anti-African American and anti-Semitic views, and who was almost certainly an instigator of mob violence. Woodward's thesis was published in 1938 as Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel to praise from the critics, who were just as complimentary when the book received further notice in the late 19606. In 1940 Woodward was called to testify before a congressional committee in support of an anti-lynching bill. Deeply immersed in his life's work, which is the unravelling of post-reconstructionist southern history, Woodward took this responsibility seriously. In 1943 Woodward was commissioned into the U. S. Navy, where he was sent to the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington. There, his duties included the creation of monographs on battles in the Pacific, which were later collected together under the title The Battle for Leyte Gulf, published in 1947. Released from active Navy duty in 1946, Woodward accepted a professorship at Johns Hopkins University. Woodward now found his own insistence on desegregation pressed into practical service. He did not hesitate to move academic conventions and meetings from hotels or restaurants unwilling to serve colleagues of all faiths and various heritages, and he also supplied Thurgood Marshall, then chief counsel for the NAACP and later a Supreme Court justice, with detailed background research used extensively for the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka court case which ultimately outlawed academic segregation. In 1951 he published Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction and Origins of the New South 1877-1913. Both books were pioneering efforts in clarifying the complex political situation at the end of the Reconstruction period, when the laws of segregation had first been boldly set forth in the South, and their publication made him one of the most significant historians of the period. By the early 1950 Woodward's works on Southern history were extensively used and quoted in university history departments all over the country. He was highly respected, but his reputation had not yert acquired the distinction it would shortly receive. In 1954 he was asked to deliver the Richard lectures at the University of Virginia. The contract for the lectures on the subject of desegregation happened to include the stipulation that any profits from publication were to go to the university. Woodward had not been expecting to publish his remarks. Nevertheless, collected for publication in 1955, they were lavishly praised by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As a result, a paperback edition appeared under the title The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Forty years later, this book was still regarded as the Bible of the civil rights movement. Yale and Afterwards In 1961 Woodward took an appointment as Sterling Professor of History at Yale University. Here he published some of his most highly-esteemed work, including a collection of essays called The Burden of Southern History. He remained at Yale for 16 years, becoming Professor Emeritus in 1977. But official retirement, while relieving him of responsibility the day-to-day running of the department, did not mean the end of writing and his continual search for the truths of history. In 1981 his name came to the fore once again when he edited a new edition of The Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut. Chesnut, whose husband had been first the United States senator from South Carolina and later an aide to the brilliant, doomed Jefferson Davis, had been a perceptive and witty woman, and Woodward felt her diaries, covering the years 1861 and 1865, had much to say about one of America's most important historical periods. With more time on his hands, Woodward also turned an increasing amount of time to criticism a crucial necessity if students of history are to distinguish between over-interpreted or justified versions of historical events. Many thoughtful essays have appeared in such widely respected publications as The New York Review of Books. In 1994 he also joined 34 other distinguished historians in their fight against the Walt Disney Company's intention to build a huge new theme park close to the Manassas battlefield and many other Civil War sites in Virginia. His advanced age did not prevent him from pointing an acid-tipped pen in the direction of the Disney headquarters. Comparing the advance of the 1990 corporation to the clash of Civil War troops that had once taken place in the area, he wrote, in an article in The New Republic, "the battalions of the Walt Disney Company advance their cause with subtler strategy, more sophisticated weaponry and a long barrage of propaganda. " C. Vann Woodward died in Hamden, Connecticut in 1999.
( In a career that has spanned more than half a century, ...)
(Detailed account of Jim Crow and all that is involved wit...)
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(Service Center For Teachers Of History, No. 35.)
(Book by Woodward, Comer Vann)
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( C. Vann Woodward was one of the most prominent and resp...)