On Thu, 9 Mar 2006, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Speaking of Hofstadter, what is his reputation these days?
Afaik, he's completely discredited among historians, and always was. He basically starts with a thesis and then reaches into history to find things that illustrate it. He had less than no interest in whether his facts were representative; when confronted with evidence that they weren't, he actually defended his tendentious cherry picking as some kind of new method.
His fame comes because he was cited endless by social scientists like Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Oscar Handlin, Seymour Martin Lipset, Parsons, and Shils (who were then cited by political scientists). They thought he was great because he comfirmed their ideas about "mass society." But it was no accident that he confirmed it. He was projecting their ideas into the past.
A very good short vivisection of him is in Peter Novick, _That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession_, pp. 337-341.
For a longer treatment, see Michael Rogin's _McCarthy and the Intellectuals_.
Most people are seduced when they first read him. He's like James Frey for intellectuals. He tells stories that confirm our prejudices.
And if his history is bad, his intellectual framework is worse -- and couldn't be more at antipodes with your own.
In my limited experience, nothing he writes has ever panned out when I went deeper into it. Even when it's far from populism and paranoia, like his book on the formation of the US party system. It's well-written, neatly organized, smart -- and basically completely made up, afaict. Sure did fall for it at first, though.
Michael