Eric Foner has a political left wing agenda. Accuracy has always been relative for Foner. It takes a back seat to his left wing viewpoint.
Bill O’Reilly’s ‘Lincoln’ book banned from Ford’s Theatre because of ‘mistakes’ - The Washington Post[excerpt]
...Eric Foner, a history professor at Columbia University who has written about the Civil War, Lincoln and the South for 40 years, said that he had not read “Killing Lincoln,” but he said in an e-mail, “Many people outside the academy have written about Lincoln and the assassination, but all sorts of unproven theories about it abound and one would hope that any writer would make use of all the relevant sources (and avoid historical errors).”...
Eric Foner is one of the most hypocritical, phony lightweights of historical scholarship. Here is an example of his politically motivated depth in research and primary sources ♘:
Don't judge a book by its prizes
Sunday, January 05, 2003
By Bob Hoover, Post-Gazette Book Editor [excerpt]
....Now, Columbia wants its prize -- and money -- back, the first time the Bancroft had been withdrawn. Last month, it announced that the school's trustees had concluded that "his book had not and does not meet the standards ... established for the Bancroft Prize."
"Arming America," now in paperback from Vintage Books with corrections from the hardcover, will stay in print, said Knopf, which published the original.
In defending the decision to honor Bellesiles in the first place, Columbia professor Eric Foner said: "We assume a book published by a reputable press has gone through a process where people have checked the facts. Members of prize committees cannot be responsible for that."
Foner's comment raises several questions, the first about the credibility of books from "reputable" publishers and the second about prizes in general.
When they appear within the nicely printed pages of a major release from a name-brand publisher, the "facts" written by authors with impressive resumes seem unimpeachable.
They must also seem that way when the manuscript, for which the publisher has paid upwards of $1 million, arrives at the editor's desk. Rewriting is a normal and accepted part of the publishing process, but you've got to wonder if the rewrites are more for style than for facts.
"Arming America's" conclusions were apparently based on historical records of dubious legitimacy, some of which were not spelled out by Bellesiles. A tough editor might send the writer back out for proof those records did indeed exist, but often sources are taken for granted, particularly if they back up the author's argument.
I'm not breaking new ground here by saying that many books get published because the publisher believes they will sell. Anyone who has seen the number of Kennedy assassination books, alleging the most amazing things, that poured from big-name firms must conclude that scholarship is not a priority.
As for scholarship, some of it is drawn from "legitimate sources" that were wrong in the first place. The mistake is passed on from writer to writer, as H.L. Mencken proved in the 1920s when he fabricated a history of the bathtub and grinned as other publications reprinted his hoax as the truth.
