SOURCE: Hays, Samuel P. Review of The New History and the Old, by Gertrude Himmelfarb. Journal of Social History 23, no. 2 (winter 1989): 395-96.

In the following review of The New History and the Old, Hays asserts that Himmelfarb's arguments are coherent and lucid, but comments that she fails to provide constructive ideas about how to bridge the gap between social and political history.

Gertrude Himmelfarb is well known as one of the most trenchant critics of the “new social history.” This book [The New History and the Old] gathers in one volume a number of her previous essays, somewhat revised, and provides the reader with a coherent view of her arguments.

Her essays are usually vigorous and uncompromising. At times they soften when she insists that she is not criticizing social history but its “dominant role” in contemporary historical writing. Throughout the essays there is a tendency not to...