The Historian behind the History brings together a collection of valuable interviews with prominent southern historians conducted over the course of a decade by graduate students in the University of Alabama’s history program for the journal Southern History. In the interviews, ten notable southern historians and mentors illuminate the state of historiography, their experiences in the profession, and their thoughts about graduate education and southern history.
 
The historians and their main topics include:
 
Richard J. M. Blackett on antebellum and African American history
Dan T. Carter on Reconstruction, Civil Rights, and George Wallace
Pete Daniel on the New Deal and the Cold War South                                                   
Laura F. Edwards on the Early Republic, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and women’s history
William W. Freehling on the antebellum South
Gary W. Gallagher on the Civil War
Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore on Jim Crow
James M. McPherson on the Civil War
Theodore Rosengarten on the Depression
J. Mills Thornton III on the antebellum South
 
In his introduction, award-winning author and historian George C. Rable draws together the multifaceted themes of these interviews, offering a compelling overview of the nature of the field. Edited by Megan L. Bever and Scott A. Suarez, The Historian behind the History offers critical insights about the craft and professional life of the historian. 
 

Megan L. Bever is an assistant professor of history at Missouri Southern State University. Scott A. Suarez is pursuing his PhD at the University of Alabama. George C. Rable is the Charles G. Summersell Chair in Southern History at the University of Alabama. His books include Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg!, which won the Lincoln Prize, the Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award in American Military History, the Jefferson Davis Award, and the Douglas Southall Freeman History Award; The Confederate Republic: A Revolution Against Politics; and God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War.

“The Historian behind the History is an absorbing collection of interviews with leading southern historians that will have particular value to graduate students as well as teachers of graduate students. Nevertheless, the distinctive life stories that the subjects share—including the role of luck and serendipity in their careers—allows this fascinating book to appeal to a broad audience beyond academia. Future historians tracing the intellectual growth of southern history will learn much as well.”
—Randal L. Hall, author of William Louis Poteat: A Leader of the Progressive-Era South and coeditor of The Southern Albatross: Race and Ethnicity in the American South and Seeing Jefferson Anew: In His Time and Ours

"What an inspired idea to have graduate students probe gifted historians about the life choices that guided them toward scholarly careers. There's a freshness to the interviews, a humanizing of historiography, that probably wouldn't have come through had a professional peer been the person doing the probing. An added bonus is George Rable’s superb introduction."
—Lawrence N. Powell, author of The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans and Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana