Shirley specified 45 instances in which he said Perlstein, a liberal author and journalist who was a senior fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future, appears to lift, without citation, material from Shirley’s 2004 book “Reagan’s Revolution.” “There are no footnotes, endnotes, bibliography or other common form of citation in his book,” Shirley told Breitbart News in a detailed critique. Instead, Shirley said, “buried on page 810, Mr. Perlstein directs readers to access his personal website where, after several clicks, they can uncover ‘A Note on Sources’ for ‘The Invisible Bridge.’ There, Mr. Perlstein credits some — but not all — of his uses of ‘Reagan’s Revolution.’ ” Edwards also notes that a previous Perlstein book “lifted portions of my Goldwater biography without citing my work.” Soon after his review appeared, Edwards received an email from Perlstein thanking him for pointing out “deficiencies” in his footnotes. “I’ll be able to correct them,” Perlstein wrote. “Very soon will have a wiki-style system that will record and time-stamp all additions and subtractions and changes, so both mistakes and missing sources, will be transparent in real time.” He urged: “Keep ‘em coming if you notice others.” klou.tt/ebz20r1gj1f4 This is why proper historiography is so important. I personally dont care if an author is liberal or conservative, so long as I know that that is the view that they will take in interpreting their sources. A good historian can acknowledge their political opinions while still working to be objective with the sources themselves. There is a big difference between academic history and pop history (which is what this book sounds like) - and one should not expect other historians to edit your citations post publication. Now some of these sources are based on some news sites that hold an opposite political opinion from the book author, so some of this might be exaggerated. Even if half of it is true it sounds sloppy on the part of both the author and the publishing house.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Aug 2014 15:00:17 +0000
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