After the Fact
2 primary works
Book 1
The Art of Historical Detection, Volume I
by James West Davidson and Mark H Lytle
Published 1 September 2009
For more than twenty-five years, After the Fact has guided students through American history and the methods used to study it. In dramatic episodes that move chronologically through American history, this best-selling book examines a broad variety of topics including oral evidence, photographs, ecological data, films and television programs, church and town records, census data, and novels. Whether for an introductory survey or for a historical methods course, After the Fact is the ideal text to introduce readers, step by step, to the detective work and analytical approaches historians use when they are actually doing history.
Book 2
This text uses 15 dramatic episodes in American history to show students how historians go about the business of interpreting the past. It discusses historical methods within the context of an historical narrative so that students may learn about American history at the same time as seeing how historians use a variety of evidence (diaries, letters, photographs and records) and methods to explain the past. This edition contains a new chapter on the Vietnam experience that examines how Hollywood incorporated the horror of My Lai into their mythic formulations and how dramatic films can be used as historical evidence. Some chapters have been substantially revised or rewritten to take into account recently published material - "The Invisible Pioneers" (chapter 5), "Sacco and Vanzetti" (chapter 10), "The Decision to Drop the Bomb" (chapter 12).