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October 1, 2009
Frustrate Comments
Oh well - I'll give up trying to post a comment over there and post it here. Maybe my old log in has died, since I haven't commented at Cliopatria in a long time.
I mentioned a few days ago that the group blog at Cliopatria had only noted some published reviews of the Taylor Branch/Bill Clinton book rather than blogging directly about the situation.
Ralph Luker responded on Cliopatria, and provides a glimpse of what he sees as the real scandal. Luker says:
The scandal isn't even, as Tinkler seems to think, that the interviews were conducted privately or that other historians are denied access to them. Frustrating as it may be, that is very commonly the case in contemporary history. The scandal of Branch's new book is that even he had no access to the tapes that he and Bill Clinton had created. All Branch had were his notes and recorded memories of the interviews that he created after leaving the interviews with Clinton.
That's interesting! And it answers my real query; I wondered what someone over there thought about it - simple links to published reviews wasn't doing it for me. Luker is a historian of the 20th Century who uses a lot of direct material - interviews and papers - so his opinion about the kind of archival and access issues involved in taped discussions is useful to know.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at October 1, 2009 8:44 PM