John Gaddis 'The Family: A World History'

Improved Essays
According John Gaddis in “The Landscape of History” he explores the question of “What do historians do?”, along with the various ways in which they conduct their research to ultimately document history. In comparison to Mary Jo Maynes and Ann Waltner’s book “The Family: A World History” they approach history from the perspective of the family. Maynes and Waltner explore the history of the family and its influence on religion and politics. Though both books explore contrasting arguments, we can look at the various ways in which history is documented and the different perspectives in which history can be observed. The main question Gaddis explores in his book, is what do historians do. Gaddis answers this question by stating that historians represent the past. Since the topic of history is a broad one, Gaddis compares representing history to that of a landscape, this is noted when he states, “For if you think of the past as a landscape, then history is the way we represent it, and it’s that act of representation that lifts us above the familiar to let us experience vicariously what we can’t experience directly: a wider view.” (Gaddis …show more content…
Writing history from the perspective of the family shows the developments of history and how much it has changed and how it changes amongst different cultures and places. The structure of the family also had the power to compromise explorers wanting to conquer new land, Maynes and Waltner view this from Christopher Columbus’, stating, “As far as I have learned, in all these islands, as I understand, every man is satisfied with one way, except the princes or kings, who are permitted to have 20. The women appear to work more than the men.” (Maynes, Waltner 51). Considering this, most explorers would either adopt the customs of that country, or change it, which ultimately changes the dynamics of the family in that

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    A historian needs to describe the various influences of the age, the climate of opinion or intellectual atmosphere, and the effect of that period of history on subsequent centuries. Above all, the historian will attempt to show the meaning of the events so that readers will understand the significance of the period to human existence Porter, 2002). Could the Great Depression have been avoided? Most historians will agree that the two main factors that lead to the Great Depression were the crash of the stock market, and the Great Plains Dust Bowl.…

    • 418 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    John Fea attempts to answer the question posed in the title of his book, “Why Study History?” He answers this question in eight chapters that talk about the different aspects of history. In chapter one, Fea talks about the role of historians as “revisionists.” Though history can be revealed through simple facts, it is meaningless without a story. Historians try to identify the story behind the facts by following the five C’s: change, context, causality, contingency, and complexity.…

    • 374 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Historical documents need to be interpreted so they can be fully understood. Historians must do research on the time period being studied to better reconstruct the past. Reconstructing the past is necessary when primary sources only provide an incomplete picture of the past. Patterns must be made, and all possibilities must be challenged. Historians take what information they know, and take information from multiple other sources that can be obtained to try and create a full picture of what happened in the past.…

    • 703 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “The Strange Death of Silas Deane” The object of historians is to tell the facts of the past without changing the details or changing the perspective of the past. Historians serves as couriers between the old times and the modern times. The transition between the past and to the present can create a misconception of what really happened. For example, the death of Silas Deane.…

    • 701 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Other Family Summary

    • 905 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The reading The Other Family addresses an important problem in Canadian society. There is a hegemonic culture in Canada that causes immigrants to fear that they will lose their own customs and traditions. In the reading the little girl drew a picture of a family that was not representative of her own but that was what she knew to be a “Canadian family”. The reaction of her mother is indicative of the fact that this is a concern for their family and their heritage. This shows the overarching issue about the education system not being inclusive of all cultures as they should be in a multicultural country.…

    • 905 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Is it a collection of facts, all true and precise details…” (1). These questions suggests that, like everything else, history is a “truth” that cannot be viewed without considering perspective. Is history an idea or an open wound? Is this name “history” like Linnaeus’s stately tree, a tree that was not ordinary and that one could choose as one’s name?…

    • 1226 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Even though there is no single truth that is agreed on, one can learn from the experiences and knowledge that comes from attempting to find the truth. Another important difference that Gaddis writes about is that some natural scientists are able to repeat their experiments in order to determine the truth and what is happening, but historians do not have the ability to do that. He writes, “we cannot relive, retrieve, or rerun it as we might some laboratory experiment or computer simulation” (Gaddis, 3). He tells his readers that historians can only study something that has already happened, so they lack the ability of scientists to be able to repeat these events in order to further their study of them. Although he points out that historians cannot create the exact experiment he also mentions that there are certain subfields in the natural sciences that are also unable to recreate the exact conditions of the time and place for use in their studies.…

    • 1147 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In conclusion, Moyers demonstrates the importance of history and the way it can help current and future conflicts happening in our civilizations. Moyers expresses the loss of concern for history. He does this through deeper meanings and observations on possible reasons people seem to have lost interest in history, such as a lack of relevance to the modern world. However, there are matters occurring in today’s communities that can correspond to some of today’s…

    • 855 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Family 1941 Analysis

    • 1197 Words
    • 5 Pages

    I chose to analyze the The Family - 1941 portray for this essay because I like the usage of the colors on this work. I feel confident analyzing colors in artworks because I learned about the emotions transmitted through colors in various art classes that I took in High School and College. Most art professors like to stress the importance of color in a work of art. They say that the understanding of the usage of the colors in a piece is important when criticizing an artwork. Colors are very important in an art work because it can give away a lot of information about the emotional state of the work.…

    • 1197 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Romare Bearden “The Family 1941” “The Family 1941” is a photo is painted by Romare Bearden. Luckily, I had a chance to see this interesting picture in a book during high school. This picture is a great example to demonstrate the dark time when America had to face Great Depression. The couple and their baby must pass through a rough time, which is demonstrated by their faces emotion.…

    • 1148 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Family is the most complex thing in the world. The mere definition of family is different for all people. For some, it is flesh and blood. For others, it’s those who they feel at home with. Every family has different issues, but some are easier to deal with than others.…

    • 1072 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    History is a subject based on story telling. Sometimes, it is based off letters and written documents. History is not written down for others to learn in a nonbiased opinion in the present moment. Historians must go through these documents later and decide what is biased, and what is not. They must read about an event from multiple perspectives and try and pick out what happened and what is an opinion.…

    • 1531 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout my career as a student, I never gave much thought as thought as to what was the meaning of history. To me it was the study of past events, the boring ones, the gruesome ones, and the embarrassing ones, but after doing some readings assigned to our class, I think I came up with my own personal definition of history. History is the study of things that happen in the past, the previous day, that present day that could matter tomorrow. To me history is everyday that you live, somewhere in the world, there is history being made, it may not be noteworthy but there is history there.…

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Holocaust Revisionists

    • 739 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Information by historians is found and not made. The historian does not create, the historian…

    • 739 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Marriage and Family is all around us. It’s on television, newspapers, and magazine ads. We pass by families on the street, in the store, in our own neighborhoods. At some point of our lives, everyone has a family. However, with society changing and progressing and falling over time, the definition of a family is changing.…

    • 1245 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays