The unsusual “HISTORY OF A HISTORY”

Abstract

Collaborative efforts among historians often have fascinating histories. A recent collaboration of mine strikes me as quite unique, though it may have some lessons for ail of us not to make the writing of history a closed shop for members of the professo- riate. My collaborator, who was indeed the brains behind the project, left school at age 12 (though he later returned at age 35 to get a PhD in Physics), has no training as a historian, writes poorly in English (it’s his fifth language), and was supposed to be dead from a spreading cancer long before the book appeared. Yet he is brilliant, and The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion, the result of our collaboration, is a provocative work of history.