Peter Novick dies at 77  Peter Novick, a University of Chicago
historian whose specialty was the study of history itself, or
historiography, died Feb. 17 at the age of 77. Novick, professor
emeritus of history, used his formidable skills to explain how
different views of the past can shape the retelling of history
and establish narratives that have a power of their own.  Early
success suggests Novick might have had a career as an historian
of 20th-century France. His Columbia University doctoral thesis,
awarded the Clark M. Ansley Award, was published in 1968 as The
Resistance Versus Vichy: The Purge of Collaborators in Liberated
France. In response to a vigorous national debate about the role
of Vichy in wartime France, the book was translated and
published in 1985 as L’Epuration Française, 1944-1949, a popular
“Le Grand Livre du Mois” book club selection.    But Novick’s
interest in how the past is talked, thought and written about
led to the two landmark books that followed: That Noble Dream:
The ‘Objectiv