Events which become historical, says Michael Kraus, do not live on because of their mere occurrence. They survive when writers re-create them and thus preserve for posterity their otherwise fleeting existence. Paul Revere's ride, for example, might well have vanished from the records had not Longfellow snatched it from approaching oblivion and given it a dramatic spot in American history. Now Revere rides on in spirited passages in our history books. In this way the recorder of events becomes almost as important as the events themselves. In other words, historiography-the study of historians...

Twenty years after Edward Channing's death in 1931, historians differed rather widely in their evaluation of his work. A British author, surveying American historiography since 1890, was quite critical of Channing's major contribution, the six-volume History of the United States, contending that it "won only a contemporary reputation which is not wearing well. "l Referring specifically to the second volume of the History, this writer stated his feeling that it "added little of substance to what was to be found in earlier works," and that it "was so partisan as sometimes to be quite...