History as High Adventure

T HIS is the seventy-second presidential address delivered before the Amer- ican Historical Association.The previous seventy-one were prepared by seventy persons.Naturally, as the game proceeds, the selection of a subject becomes increasingly difficult because the firstcomers harvested the tallest grain, leaving to us later ones the gleaning of well-mown fields.The presidents have dealt with the usefulness of history, with the facts, the fallacies, the vagaries, the science, the philosophy, the content, and with the individuals who support the great man theory; they have examined imagination, faith, freedom, distinction, religion, and even truth.He who scans these contributions feels that there is little left to say on the more serious aspects of history

Adventure · Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Contradiction · Epistemology · Faith · Field (mathematics · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · Presidential address · Presidential system · Repetition (rhetorical device · Sociology · Subject (documents · Computer Science · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Mathematics · Psychology · History · Law · Philosophy