The Historian behind the History

"What an inspired idea to have graduate students probe gifted historians about the life choices that guided them toward scholarly careers. There's a freshness to the interviews, a humanizing of historiography, that probably wouldn't have come through had a professional peer been the person doing the probing. An added bonus is George Rable’s superb introduction."
—Lawrence N. Powell, author of The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans and Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana

“The Historian behind the History is an absorbing collection of interviews with leading southern historians that will have particular value to graduate students as well as teachers of graduate students. Nevertheless, the distinctive life stories that the subjects share—including the role of luck and serendipity in their careers—allows this fascinating book to appeal to a broad audience beyond academia. Future historians tracing the intellectual growth of southern history will learn much as well.”
—Randal L. Hall, author of William Louis Poteat: A Leader of the Progressive-Era South and coeditor of The Southern Albatross: Race and Ethnicity in the American South and Seeing Jefferson Anew: In His Time and Ours