In this post (and, perhaps, in some follow-up posts) I want to examine some of the methodological choices of Lizabeth Cohen’s Making a New Deal (1990). This is not a review of the book, nor is it an assessment of the book’s argument.  This isn’t even a book summary.  Instead, this is a practical inquiry into how this Bancroft-winning monograph can shed some light on how historians grapple with the most prosaic aspects of that capacious term historiography; I want to use Cohen’s book as a way to discuss the craftsmanship of writing history.* Read more