Interpretation of History

by Joseph R. Strayer

1943. No Edition Remarks. 186 pages. No dust jacket. This is an ex-Library book. Grey cloth covered boards. Library copy, with expected inserts, stamps and inscriptions. Pages remain clear with minimal tanning and foxing. Some occasional mild cracking to gutters throughout, binding remains reasonably firm. Cracking to hinges, no damage to end papers. Boards have moderate edge-wear with bumping to corners and rubbing to surfaces. Mild crushing to spine ends. Book has a slight forward lean.

Genres: History

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Joseph Reese Strayer taught at Princeton University for many decades, starting in the 1930s. He was chair of the history department (1941–1961) and president of the American Historical Association in 1971. Strayer has been credited with training a large percentage of the American medievalists profession; many of his students are still teaching and active. Notable students include Teofilo Ruiz, William Chester Jordan, and Richard W. Kaeuper. Norman F. Cantor often highlighted his status as a student of Strayer's, but several of Strayer's other pupils - who wish to remain anonymous for personal and professional reasons - have expressed their doubt that Strayer ever acknowledged Cantor as his student or that Cantor had any formal affiliation with him at all.

When not teaching medieval history at Princeton, Strayer was involved with the CIA, as a member of the CIA's Office of National Estimates. The extent of his involvement, at a time when the C.I.A was running covert operations to destabilize governments around the world (Iran, Brazil, Congo, Dominican Republic, Guyana and Chile), has never been fully assessed or verified.

Norman Cantor recognized three books as most important to Strayer's legacy: Feudalism (1965), which summarized three decades of his research and thinking on the topic; On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (1970), in which he shows the relevance of medieval historical institutions to modern governmental institutions; and The Reign of Philip the Fair (1980), representing over 30 years of archival research and the most comprehensive work on the topic in any language - other than Jean Favier's Philippe le Bel (1978). Strayer was editor of the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, the largest and most comprehensive encyclopedia of the Middle Ages in the English language.