משתמש:Uri R/ארגז חול/מיהו היסטוריון?

ומה חושבים אנשי המקצוע על הסוגיה?

ערכתי חיפוש ב-Jstor בכל כתבי העת בהיסטוריה (מעל 350) למחרוזת "Edwin Black" תחת "ביקורות" מאז ספרו הראשון ב-1984. להלן שש התוצאות שעלו בחכה. הייתה עוד תוצאה אחת שסקרה את הספר יחד עם שישה אחרים והייתה מעל 25 עמודים אותה לא קראתי. יתכן והקישורים למטה יעבדו רק למי שיש לו גישה למאמרים. מתוך סקירות אלו עולה כי ההיסטוריונים המקצועיים אינם רואים בעבודתו של בלאק עבודה היבטורית רצינית ומפקפקים בעשירותו לעתוב את הספרים שכתב. ברור שאין הם רואים בו קולגה למקצוע ובר פלוגתא מקצועי ורציני. לאור אלו, לאור היעדר ההשעלה הפורמאלית וההתעלמות הכללית מספריו באקדמיה אני חושב שאין אנו יכולים להגדירו כ"היסטוריון" ודי ב"עיתונאי שכתב אודות מחלוקות שארעו בעבר." להלן התוצאות: אורי • שיחה 02:09, 13 במרץ 2014 (IST)

The Transfer Agreement: The Untold Story of the Secret Pact between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine

• Review by: Lawrence Baron, German Studies Review, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Feb., 1987), pp. 186-187 [1]
  • "Black's book is coherently organized and well written. Unfortunately, Black also engages in dubious historical speculations to discredit the World Zionist Organization's decision."
  • "To substantiate that viewpoint, Black makes a number of assertions that will strike most German historians as simplistic and erroneous"
  • ולסיכום: "Warning his readers against concluding that the Zionists bear some responsibility for the Holocaust, Black demonstrates how superficial it is to conjecture about all the "what ifs" which might have changed the course of history. It is a pity that he failed to heed this advice in the rest of his book"

IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

• Review by: Henry Ashby Turner Jr. The Business History Review, Vol. 75, No. 3 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 636-639 [2]
  • הפתיחה: "A self-styled "investigative journalist specializing in corporate miscon- duct" (p. 15), Edwin Black charges with prosecutorial zeal that I...These are grave accusations, but a close reading of this digression-ridden, hyperbole-laden volume reveals them to be groundless, despite 1,556 reference notes"
  • גוף הביקורת הוא הזמה של טיעוני בלאק אחד אחרי השני

הסיכום: "Despite defects that render it all but worthless as an historical study, Black's book must be regarded as a success. Launched by a lavish advertising campaign and released simultaneously with an announcement of a class action suit against IBM on behalf of Holocaust survivors, it quickly became a bestseller in both the United States and Germany. Business is, after all, still business."

• "Stranger than Science Fiction: Edwin Black, IBM, and the Holocaust", Review by: Michael Allen, Technology and Culture, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Jan., 2002), pp. 150-154 [3]
  • כותרת הסקירה הארוכה במיוחד: Stranger than Science Fiction: Edwin Black, IBM, and the Holocaust
  • "Edwin Black's IBM and the Holocaust...briefly achieved best-seller status soon after its publication, but sales dwindled in the face of negative reviews. While this review is also negative, it is important to note at the outset that Black addresses a significant issue"
  • "If nothing else, IBM and the Holocaust should prompt us to ask why this subject has been left to someone like Black, a science fiction writer with limited abilities as a historian."
  • "Black has also hit upon a somewhat clever approach, similar to that recently employed by..."
  • "Unfortunately, doubts as to Black's competence to tackle this important subject arise within the first few pages, which introduce the inflated and pompous rhetoric that characterizes the entire text."
  • "Black as much as admits to only a tenuous mastery of the language skills needed to read the primary sources central to the Holocaust."
  • "He seems to have cajoled historians and archivists into aiding him, some of whom he obviously pestered repeatedly for "telephonic assistance." He does reassure us that over "the past thirty years of investigative reporting and publishing, I have learned to quickly identify the genuine pros," but the reader's suspicion only increases when we learn that Black has recruited "researchers and translators ...through Internet sites""
  • "The body of the book confirms every nagging doubt. Not only does Black's command of German seem dodgy, his ability to handle English-language sources is questionable."
  • "In almost every case in which I was able to make a cursory check of Black's text against his own cited sources I found numerous errors, ranging from the trivial to the egregious."
  • "Black relies extensively upon the careful research of Aly and Roth but consistently ignores any evidence that contradicts his own argument. Beyond this, he renders misleading summaries of information that does support his argument..."
  • והסיכום: "Rather than an astounding work of scholarly research and intellectual courage, IBM and the Holocaust is the product of a somewhat fevered brain. That hype and advertising could turn it into a best-seller, for however brief a period of time, says much about the gullibility of leftists and the American publishing industry's low standards. But the shame of all this is that ignorance regarding the complicity of American corporations in the crimes of National Socialism still reigns supreme."

War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race

• Review by: Barry Mehler, The Journal of American History, Vol. 91, No. 2 (Sep., 2004), p. 671 [4]
  • "This is the broadest survey to date of eugenics in America, England, and Germany from Sir Francis Galton to the present"
  • "Edwin Black is a journalist..."
  • "the book inevitably has gaping holes. Entire terrains were missed, as one would expect from a journalist doing a survey of decades of scholarship with the single-minded focus of writing a popular and controversial history."
  • ולסיכום: "Despite these flaws, this is a fascinating and well-written book. The final chapter on the future of eugenics is the best discussion of the topic I have seen anywhere. The book is well worth reading."

• Review by: Philip J. Pauly, Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Spring, 2004), pp. 181-184 [5]
  • "Journalist Edwin Black claims that..." - הדגשה שלי, שמקובלת לציון מי שאינו היסטוריון
  • "Historians who have worked to keep up with the flood of scholarly literature produced during the last forty years on the history of eugenics and related enterprises can reasonably be skeptical regarding Black's claim that this is new and uncharted investigative territory, and they can question whether his approach leads to greater understanding. War Against the Weak takes eugenics out of its historical context, papers over the gaps separating ideas, proposals, conspiracies, laws, and actions, and is much too selective in marshalling evidence"
  • "Such ordinary criticisms generated out of the literature of the last two decades come easily to an historian of biology like myself on reading a book that advertises itself as "a great project" that will "tear away the thickets of mystery surrounding the eugenics movement around the world" (p. ix), but then paints with a brush so broad as to efface the clarifications that historians have mad"
  • "Does Black, as a crusading journalist, possess qualities (investigative energy and moral vision) that are more important than mastery of the secondary literature or the ability to identify H. S. Jennings correctly? My answers to these questions are (not surprisingly) negative, for two reasons" - ובהמשך שתי פסקאות מסבירת למה בלאק איינו כשיר לכתוב את הספר

• Review by: Lucy Jane King, Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. 101, No. 1, The Civil War and Abraham Lincoln (MARCH 2005), pp. 90-92 [6]
  • טוענת שבפרשנותו לפרמסיס גלאטון בלאר מסתמך על מי שלא הבינו ועיוותו את גלטאון.
  • מעריכה את הספר כמקיף ומאוזן.
  • הסוקרת איננה היסטוריונית