Thinking Back: The Perils of Writing History.

WOODWARD, C. Vann.

Item Number: 3367

Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986.

First edition of the famed historian’s autobiography. Octavo,original cloth. Inscribed by the historian on the front free endpaper. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Uncommon signed.

In this blend of autobiography and historiography, Woodward retraces the sources and significance of his writings about the American South. Throughout he remains gracious and generous, though largely unrepentant, as he debates with his critics on the central themes of Southern history, especially his insistence on the social, economic, and political discontinuities marking Southern experience. Woodward reminds us that the perils of writing history include the withering quality of any historical truth over time, neglect by critics, and, most of all, writing without conviction.