SOURCE: Noble, David W. “Perhaps the Rise and Fall of Scientific History in the American Historical Profession.” Reviews in American History 17, no. 4 (December 1989): 519-22.

In the following review, Noble argues that That Noble Dream provides “a rich and powerful narrative” surrounding the “objectivity question” in the American historical profession.

[In That Noble Dream,] Peter Novick has written an unprecedented and invaluable study of the idea of objectivity among American historians. Starting in the 1880s, when historians established their professional identity, he carries his narrative up to the immediate present. To illuminate what objectivity meant to each succeeding generation during this century, he has analyzed the personal papers and major publications of many of the most important historians. When young American historians in the 1880s rejected the authority of the previous generation of amateur historians, they found legitimacy for themselves in the German ideal of scientific history which they...