SOURCE: “History as Fiction,” in The Nation, Vol. 130, No. 3388, June 11, 1930, p. 684.

In the following brief review, Loving discusses Neumann's The Rebels as historical fiction.

In The Devil, King Haber, and The Rebels Alfred Neumann showed with what success psychological values can be applied to historical characters and events. In each one of these books we note that the author has proceeded on the assumption—an anathema, I imagine, to most professional historians—that the arcanum of facts must not be too reverently searched or worshiped. To put it another way: history-writing and fiction meet at that focal point where both the historian and the novelist begin to revise and color the available data, which has been, of course, already tainted by the dust of time. Both go in quest, not of “ultimate truth,” but of sound values. In modern philosophy these values are called percepta; nor need we...