HISTORY AS IF YOU WERE PROUD OF IT:

Pierre Berton, 84, Popular Canadian Historian, Dies (IAN AUSTEN, 12/03/04, NY Times)

For many years a new book by Mr. Berton was as inevitable in autumn as falling leaves. Unusually prolific, Mr. Berton wrote more than 50 books, was host of radio and television shows, contributed newspaper and magazine columns, was a magazine editor and appeared as a quiz-show panelist for 37 years.

Mr. Berton's history books covered a wide range of topics, from Canadian troops who fought in World War I to the Klondike gold rush and the building of the first transcontinental railroad in Canada. They also proved to be unusually popular. In 1972 Mr. Berton had four books on Canadian best-seller lists simultaneously. Two years later his book about the Canadian Pacific Railway, "The National Dream," formed the basis of a television mini-series.

Some reviewers and academic historians criticized Mr. Berton's books as lacking in critical analysis or new insights into past events. But other historians say those criticisms were beside the point.

"The one thing I admire and the reason I try to emulate Pierre Berton is that he was read," said Desmond Morton, a professor of history at McGill University in Montreal and an author. "He believed in narrative history, one damned thing after another. Many of my colleagues don't think that is history, which is why no one reads them."

When they say he didn't offer critical analysis they mean, of course, that he presented the conquest of the Americas as a heroic event, rather than a lamentable one. That's what made him readable.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 4, 2004 11:20 AM