Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud American History from Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Belles

That flaw would become a fissure and eventually a schism. A new history arose which, written in part by radicals and liberals, had little use for the noble and the heroic, and that rankled many who wanted a celebratory rather than a critical history. To this combustible mixture of elements was added the flame of public debate. History in the 1990s was a minefield of competing passions, political views and prejudices. It was dangerous ground, and, at the end of the decade, four of the nation's most respected and popular historians were almost destroyed by it: Michael Bellesiles, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Stephen Ambrose and Joseph Ellis.

This is their story, set against the wider narrative of the writing of America's history. It may be, as Flaubert put it, that "Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times." To which he could have added: falsify, plagiarize and politicize, because that's the other story of America's history.

• That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession (Ideas in Context)
• A Century of American Historiography
• The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
• A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812
• The Return of Martin Guerre
• The Allure of the Archives (The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History)
• History: A Very Short Introduction
• A Pocket Guide to Writing in History
• A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Ninth Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
• Who is the Historian?