On the 1930s, Alan Furst’s “Dark Star”, “Night Soldiers”, and “Polish Officer” are brilliant yet very different renditions of pre-war Central Europe. Many of Furst’s more recent novels suffer by comparison, but he is not to be missed. “Dark Star” also reads well against Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon”.

Among the historical novelists, Dorothy Dunnett’s two series (the 6-book “Lymond Chronicles” and the 8-book “House of Niccolo”) are both wonderful, but very hard to read in snippets. Anything by Iain Pears (partner of the historian Ruth Harris) is a fine choice. As a French historian myself, I am strongly partial to Marguerite Yourcenar’s “Memoirs of Hadrian”, easily available in translation.

Alternate worlds/SF: I am using Connie Willis’s novella “Fire Watch” (about time travelling historians during the Blitz) in an historical methods course, for a week entitled “What is the Historical Imagination”. David Brin’s “Thor Meets Captain America” is a minor classic of the genre, although it in some ways trivialises a very dire topic.

Looking forward to reading about the course wrapup in a few months.

The advantage: Everyone is telling the same story as they saw the events; each story is equally true. No single story is complete.
The disadvantage: It’s long! The small paperback version is ~750 pages.

(As for Alan Furst, my favorite is “The Polish Officer”)

Also interesting might be a more explicit focus on arguments over what makes history writing different from anthropology. The history/prehistory distinction can be just as interesting to investigate as the history/fiction one.

As for films, how about HBO’s recent _Elizabeth I_?

Also from the film world, what about _United 93_, either on its own terms or as compared to _World Trade Center_ ? (I couldn’t bring myself to see _WTC_, but I imagine it would offer a useful point of comparison.)

I’ve tried to shoehorn Hayden White and the debate about his work into this course before, and the problem I think is that it drags the entire course back towards being an “internal” debate about scholarly history.

For some really tasty comparative goodness, try her take on Macbeth’s story, King Hereafter. It’s much more medieval and Scots-centric, illuminating relationships between the Orkneys and the Scottish mainland. Plus there’s Lady Godiva in a revealing role.

On historical novels, Maryse Conde’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem is short, teachable, and smart. Samuel Delany’s Atlantis: Model 1924 is a brilliant and beautiful look back at the Harlem Renaissance. Neil Gaiman’s 1602 is a historical graphic novel, or just plain old comic book. Guy Gavriel Kay has been writing historical fantasy for the last several years. Every one of August Wilson’s plays is historical drama.

I’ve posted lists of literary/historical re-visions of antebellum and early American literature for my students; feel free to send your students in those directions.

Gotta second the Years of Rice and Salt recommendation. Robinson’s novel is not just alternate history but about debates over the writing of history (along with many other things), plus its structure enacts one character’s claim about the best way to write history. But doubledubya is right to emphasize Dick’s The Man in the High Castle–shorter and more teachable.

On memorialization, contrasting the Smithsonian controversy in the US with the ways the atomic bombings are commemorated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki might work well. Pearl Harbor in reverse works well, too. As would having students compare Russian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese textbooks on “the Great East Asian War” with US/UK versions–or, the shorter version, having them research the international politics of the controversies over Japanese textbooks. BTW, China and Japan recently agreed to form a committee to try to find common ground on the history of WWII, with an eye to resolving such disputes. Perhaps a new theme on the politics of historiography? Could get into other topics such as historical propaganda films (like the Why We Fight series, for instance), too.

No Hayden White? No debates over truth in the writing of history? Did I just miss them on a fast read, or is the course steeped in that pomo/post-structuralist perspective (or is such a perspective passe or always already uninteresting)?