Bringing history to life and making it relevant to what’s happening today has seemingly not been a priority. But that may be starting to change.
Like most academics, historians often write for others in their field. So, I was particularly gratified when my writing coach client, Kathy J. Cooke—professor of history and founding dean of the University of South Alabama’s Honors College from 2017 to 2022—decided to steer her publish-or-perish manuscript toward a broader, lay audience. Understanding “the real story of race in America and how racial divides are built into our culture, history, and politics,” she points out, “provides an opportunity to rectify the harms of [racism], stabilize America, and to begin to live up to the radical vision that formed the United States of America.”
Deciding to refocus her book–now titled American Carnage: Race Betterment, White Supremacy, and the Bipartisan Roots of Trumpism–in this way has meant months of extra research and writing since she will be drawing parallels between our history and what is happening in our country today. It also means that her message could reach and potentially influence a lot of people rather than simply a narrow pool of fellow academicians.
The effort to make history relevant to a wider audience is also showing up as story. In the article “Humanities in the Public Square: How to Bring History to the Masses—and Why It Matters,” author Jeffrey Veidlinger recalls how he used the story-showing (my term) skills he learned in a workshop when writing his book In the Midst of Civilized Europe.
“I learned to avoid imprecision and abstractions, to humanize historical personalities, and to use the passage of time to build suspense,” he writes. “I also learned to engage readers by encouraging them to picture the events I was describing. In my previous academic writing, when describing a historic diplomatic meeting, I would discuss the various arguments officials advanced, the resulting debates, and the eventual conclusions. For my latest book, I added vivid sensory details: I described the architecture of the building in which the summit took place and painted a picture of the negotiating table with ashtrays and folders strewn across it. I characterized the individuals sitting around the table—how they wore their hair, where they put their hands, what expressions they made.”
When I talk to my clients about story-showing, I urge them to think of their book as a movie. We want the reader to live the experience rather than just being told about it. Veidlinger takes this one step further. By living the experience through multiple narratives and, in his words, “competing explanations,” he wanted readers to make their own inferences about what had happened rather than leading them down a logical path that would inevitably compel them to agree with his conclusions.
When it comes to bringing history to life, reader participation, story-showing, and connecting the past to the present are all game changers. Kathy Cooke’s book shows us all too clearly that not recognizing or understanding history dooms us to a vicious repeat cycle. We need to change that in a hurry. So, here’s to bringing history to life!
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