{"word_count": 599, "character_count": 3748}
Mencionábamos hace poco el volumen de Gordon S. Wood, señalando sus prevenciones hacia las nuevas escrituras de la historia. Indicábamos algunos de sus ejemplos, entre los cuales sobresalía Jill Lepore, una prolífica historiadora de la Harvard University (que este año nos mostrará sus pinitos como novelista). Pues bien, curiosidades del destino, Lepore se refiere a la obra de Wood en New Yorker, en un interesante y amplio artículo titulado "Just the Facts, Ma’am. Fake memoirs, factual fictions, and the history of history". Lepore señala que, en efecto, en 1991 "the eminent American historian Gordon Wood, writing in The New York Review of Books, warned that if things were to keep on this way historians would soon "put themselves out of business." Reviewing Simon Schama's "Dead Certainties (Unwarranted Speculations)"-a history book in which Schama indulged in flights of fancy, fully disclosed as such-Wood wrote, "His violation of the conventions of history writing actually puts the integrity of the discipline of history at risk". That review, along with twenty more (including one of a book of mine), appears in Wood's new book".Pero Jill Lepore aprovecha para repasar otra novedad quizá más significativa, aunque en una onda parecida: A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century (Knopf ), volumen del que asegura es un "fascinating compendium". Su autor es John Burrow, que no es ningún desconocido: profesor de historia intelectual en Sussex y de historia del pensamiento europeo en Oxford, recibe ahora sus réditos como docente en el Williams College de Massachusetts. Es autor de libros como Evolution and Society: a study in Victorian Social Theory (1966), el premiado A Liberal Descent: four Victorian Historians (1981), Gibbon (1984) o La crisis de la razón: el pensamiento europeo, 1848-1914 (Barcelona, Crítica, 2001), ademas de participar en volúmenes colectivos, como La política, ciencia noble: un estudio de la historia intelectual en el siglo XIX  (México, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1987).Lo cierto es que esta History of Histories ha recibido una excelente acogida en el mercado americano, no sólo por parte de Lepore. Véase, por ejemplo, la reseña de Adam Kirsch, crítico literario del New York Sun.Ahora bien, ya sucedió lo mismo cuando se editó la versión británica a finales de 2007 en el sello Allen Lane, uno de los de la casa Penguin. Así lo atestiguan los comentarios del helenista Paul Cartledge en The Independent, de Felipe Fernández-Armesto en el Times o de Keith Thomas en The Guardian. Les dejo con este último, el más elogioso:"An awareness that historical writing is as much a cultural activity as a developing science underpins John Burrow's large and absorbing new book. Burrow is a leading authority on the intellectual history of the 18th and 19th centuries. Now in his retirement, he has ventured far beyond his usual territory in order to provide a survey of historical writing over the past two and a half thousand years. He makes things a little easier for himself by confining himself to historians in Europe and North America, and giving most attention to those who wrote in English or are available in translation. Even so, he has undertaken a herculean task which would have daunted most scholars. Inevitably there are some trivial slips on which the specialists will pounce. But he has turned his formidable assignment into a triumphant success. The result is a highly enjoyable book, based on a vast amount of reading, written with attractive simplicity, brimming with acute observations, and often very witty. Anyone who wants to know what historical writing has contributed to our culture should start here".