After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection Combined

by Davidson, James West; Lytle, Mark H.

• ISBN13: 9780072294262
• ISBN10: 0072294264
• Edition: 4th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-10-08
• Publisher: MCG

Summary

For more than twenty years, After the Fact has been a popular and best-selling approach to guiding students through American History and the methods used to generate it. In fifteen dramatic episodes that move chronologically through American history, this book examines such topics as oral evidence, photographs, ecological data, films and television programs, church and town records, census data, and novels.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

Serving Time in Virginia:

The Perspectives of Evidence in Social History

CHAPTER TWO

The Visible and Invisible Worlds of Salem:

Studying Crisis at the Community Level

CHAPTER THREE

Declaring Independence:

The Strategies of Documentary Analysis

CHATPER FOUR

Jackson’s Frontier—and Turner’s:

History and Grand Theory

CHAPTER FIVE

The Invisible Pioneers:

Ecological Transformations along the Western Frontier

CHAPTER SIX

The Madness of John Brown:

The Uses of Psychohistory

CHAPTER SEVEN

The View from the Bottom Rail:

Oral History and the Freedpeople

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Mirror with a Memory:

Photographic Evidence and the Urban Scene

CHAPTER NINE

USDA Government Inspected:

The Jungle of Political History

CHAPTER TEN

Sacco and Vanzetti:

The Case of History versus Law

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Dust Bowl Odyssey:

The Collective History of a Migration

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Decision to Drop the Bomb:

The Uses of Models in History

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

From Rosie to Lucy:

The Mass Media and Images of Women in the 1950s

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Breaking into Watergate:

Plumbing a Presidency through Audio Tapes

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Where Trouble Comes:

History and Myth in the Films of Vietnam