Academic Books and Non-Academic Books
This was posted yesterday.
In another thread you wrote, "We live in a world in which there has never been an academic book which has criticized both Franklin Roosevelt's foreign policy and domestic economic policy. Not one book. That's what needs to be written. If we can't get this written, the rest of it is just barking at the moon."Please elaborate on the difference between academic books and non-academic books and why it matters.
I begin with the first book I read where I knew there was a big difference: John T. Flynn's The Roosevelt Myth (1948). I read it in 1958 for a high school term paper on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
I did not know that Flynn had been an opponent of FDR almost from the beginning of his Presidency. He was one of a handful of journalists who were opponents of FDR. He had written A Country Squire in the White House. This was his parting shot at FDR.
He was a lively writer. I liked his slant. But about halfway through the book I began to recognize that footnotes were missing. He sometimes made highly incriminating statements, but there were no footnotes. I realized that I would have to verify anything I cited from the book. That was not easy in 1958. The closest serious library was at UCLA, and UCLA did not have open stacks. I was not a UCLA student. I could get inter-library loans, but that took time.
I re-read the book 30 years later. My assessment had not changed. It needed more footnotes.
There are scholarly books critical of FDR's foreign policy. The best are ancient: Tansill's Back Door to War (1952) and two books by Charles A. Beard: President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 (1948) and American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940 (1946). These were detailed, heavily footnoted books. Tansill did not discuss FDR's domestic economic policies. Beard was a Progressive. He approved of FDR's domestic economic policies.
There are books critical of his domestic economic policies. The best one is by Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man (2007).
These are academic books. When you read something in one of them, you can "go to the bank" with it. You can cite it, and you won't get this response: "There is no evidence for that statement" -- at least not from a specialist. The point may be debated in academic circles of specialists, but there is debate.
We can use non-academic books to get an overview. But then we must do further research. Most readers of non-academic books do not do further research. That is OK, as long as a person is not staking his reputation or his worldview on the non-academic book. When the stakes are high, we need academic books and reviews by academic specialists. We must be aware of the pitfalls and speed bumps in any thesis. Drive carefully.