Simon Schama: Academic History Is Dull!  Jonathan Thompson, in
the London Independent (Feb. 22, 2004):  Simon Schama, one of
Britain's best-known historians , has accused fellow academics
of making the subject too dull.  Professor Schama is calling for
a return to a "golden age" of historians of the calibre of
Gibbon, Macaulay and Carlyle. He says modern-day historians -
with a few notable exceptions - have lost the ability to inspire
the public with tales of the past in the same way as their
predecessors.  "History's adventure has become a bit lost," said
Professor Schama. "It's not as explosive or exciting as it used
to be. What we need to recover is our reckless literary
courage." He blamed the subject's demise on the "juggernaut of
academic history" which is obsessed with scientific data and
obsessive footnotes rather than good storytelling.  On the eve
of his new BBC television series, Historians of Genius,
Professor Schama holds up the great historians of the 18th and
19th centuries as examples of how h