Pessen, Edward. The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 86, no. 3. 1988.

Abstract:

Convinced that in the modern “historical profession as a whole the new history is now the new orthodoxy” (p. 4), and equally convinced that this new orthodoxy poses terrible dangers not only to the historical profession but to the entire intellectual enterprise in the Western world, Gertrude Himmelfarb has written ι savage attack on some of our recent ways of treating the past. Readers interested in observing the powerful biases that color the thinking of an eminent historian will find The New History and the Old fascinating. Readers interested in insightful and fair-minded portrayal of the newer approaches and methodologies influencing historians over the past three decades will find Professor Himmelfarb’s book disappointing. What is most surprising, in view of the good histories she has written on Victorian England, is the unimpressive intellectual quality of what at several points lapses into diatribe rather than judicious analysis. Excessive ideological fervor is unhelpful in a critique of scholars charged with excessive ideological fervor.

Read more on Jstor: Review: The New History and the Old: Critical Essays and Reappraisals by Gertrude Himmelfarb