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Remembering Robert Sobel (1931–1999)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

David B. Sicilia
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Extract

Longstanding debates among academic historians about the role of the narrative and the need (or not) for relevance are not likely to end any time soon. Business historians have been relatively unreflective about such matters, at least compared with, say, labor or women’s historians, who regularly sprinkle their journals with historiographic reassessments. Perhaps this is because there was little on the theoretical end of the scale in business history to sustain earnest debate prior to the publication of Alfred Chandler’s first masterwork, Strategy and Structure, scarcely more than a generation ago. Still, it was Allan Nevins—the journalist cum Columbia University history professor whose prodigious writings included several elegant business biographies—who memorably satirized the history academy with “Dr. Dry-as-Dust,” a crusty purveyor of densely ponderous prose for like-minded scholarly elites.

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Articles
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Enterprise & Society , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , March 2000, pp. 182 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2000. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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