The aspiration to relate the past 'as it really happened' has been the central goal of American professional historians since the late nineteenth century. In this remarkable history of the profession, Peter Novick shows how the idea and ideal of objectivity were elaborated, challenged, modified, and defended over the last century. Drawing on the unpublished correspondence as well as the published writings of hundreds of American historians from J. Franklin Jameson and Charles Beard to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Eugene Genovese, That Noble Dream is a richly textured account of what American historians have thought they were doing, or ought to be doing, when they wrote history - how their principles influenced their practice and practical exigencies influenced their principles.

‘A brilliant and fascinating book.’

Laurence Veysey

‘A judicious appraisal of men and circumstances, erudite and wide-ranging. Irreverent but not nastily irreverent, with an admirable delicacy of touch.’

William H. McNeill

‘An astute and provocative account of how the historical profession in America has dealt with its founding myth and central norm - the ideal of objectivity.’

Dorothy Ross