SOURCE: Elton, Geoffrey. Review of That Noble Dream, by Peter Novick. Journal of Economic History 49, no. 3 (September 1989): 775-77.

In the following review, Elton describes That Noble Dream as a “fascinating book” that provides a “splendid story” of the history of academic historical scholarship in the United States.

Nowhere do historians go in for so much self-examination as they do in America: it is a part of American culture to examine the self. The same conglomeration of habits also accounts for American historians' exceptional willingness to listen to self-appointed guides, some of them sane but more of them not evidently so. The profession therefore lends itself well to the sort of analysis that Peter Novick has undertaken in [That Noble Dream,] this fascinating, if rather overlong book. (Excessive length in books is another American habit.)

This passion for commitment, however, this accumulation of fretful worries and serious night thoughts...