The Search for an Audience.

I don't think that there is anything "wrong" with history. It has experienced the same specialization that every other academic subject has. The western University system of professors and graduate students constantly rethinking old problems and researching previously unexplored topics, the collective body of human knowledge has increased drastically. However, as a result of the requirement that the academics at universities be constantly breaking new ground, so much work has been done that no one can be an expert on the subject as a whole. As a result, the trend of specialization inevitably occurs. So nothing is "wrong" with history that isn't wrong with math, where the last person to truly have mastery over the entire subject died before America abolished slavery.

Since the specialized and specific nature of modern historical inquiry makes it irrelevant to the reading public, historians and their institutions need to make some kind of a compromise. Groundbreaking research in a specialized field is important to the advancement of the field, but historians should also be encouraged to try and apply these new concepts to a broader view of history. Otherwise, no one will read about it. Historians need to find a way to then reintegrate their newest conclusions into more accessible books.

The issue does not lie solely with the nature academia. The fact is that for all the knowledge and research skill that a historian may have, they don't have to be good writers to be published. While using the full arsenal of the very significant English language makes one look smarter and more educated, it also can kill prose if it's not used well. The problem with most history books that I've read in my undergraduate history classes is that they're not interesting. I once had to read an entire book about hops farmers in three counties of upstate New York during the nineteenth century, even though the class was about all of American History up to reconstruction. It's true that this is an example of incredible overspecialization, but it was also just not written in a compelling way. I've also read countless books on subjects that legitimately interested me, but often they're a constant battle with the sandman because the historians who wrote them are not well trained in prose!

I guess that most people read books about history by Journalists because journalists write with the goal of people reading it. Historians often seem to write with something else in mind. Now, I have read books by Historians by choice, outside of any class. Often they are more general in scope than the books my professors assign, and are probably less respected by the academic community, but they are still authored by professors. I'm probably unusual in doing this, I certainly don't invest an inordinate amount of my time to it, and it isn't my "first resort" in learning about history. More often I learn about history from the internet, which is far more dependable than many give it credit for. So long as sources are cited, and I can look at the bibliography, I feel okay about refreshing my memory about the Napoleanic Wars or the Punic Wars or the Cola Wars from Wikipedia. In the end, those boring books written by academics are cited frequently by wikipedia's authors, who can boil it down to the broad overview that I want on a subject for which I have only passing interest in.