SOURCE: A review of The Content of the Form, in Journal of American Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1, April, 1989, p. 180.

In the following review, King offers a positive assessment of The Content of the Form.

Over the last twenty years the philosophy of history has seen a radical shift in focus. No longer is the main point of contention whether history is a science; now it is whether and to what extent history and fiction are more alike than they are different from each other. The person most responsible for this is Hayden White, beginning with his magisterial Metahistory (1974) and continuing in his first collection of essays, Tropics of Discourse (1978).

The Content of the Form also collects essays written by White since the appearance of Tropics and it also takes as its concern the problem of history's relationship on the one hand to “reality” and on the other hand to...