Erik Larson Quotes

I am a historian. I do a lot of research, and I try to get it right.

I conduct very few interviews with veterans. The contemporaneous, or near-contemporaneous, record for WWII is so spectacularly deep that latter-day recollections are largely unnecessary for a historian. Of course, in considering any account, I'm looking for additional sources that can confirm or enlarge that version of events.

I believe that historians and analysts of historical events need the authority of facts supplied by living witnesses to the events, which they make their subject.

Biographers search for traces, for evidence of activity, for signs of movement, for letters, for diaries, for photographs.

In reconstructing the past, historians generally are compelled to rely on accounts written after the event by participants and witnesses, or on the hearsay versions of those who learned at second-hand what had occurred. Such writings are subject to the infirmities of recollection, or of bias arising from allegiance to one side or the other.

It is impossible to write ancient history because we do not have enough sources, and impossible to write modern history because we have far too many.

As a historian, you can only go as far as the evidence will take you.

We need to read history from the source.

I often tell people who want to write historical fiction: don't read all that much about the period you're writing about; read things from the period that you're writing about. There's a tendency to stoke up on a lot of biography and a lot of history, and not to actually get back to the original sources.

As a biographer, I try to uncover the adventures and personalities behind each character I research. Once my character and I have reached an understanding, then I begin the detective work reading old books, old letters, old newspapers, and visiting the places where my subject lived. Often I turn up surprises, and of course, I pass them on.

With the Truman book, I wrote the entire account of his experiences in World War I before going over to Europe to follow his tracks in the war. When I got there, there was a certain satisfaction in finding I had it right - it does look like that.

I have certainly amassed many historical research gathering skills.

I just love the days when you come out of the archives with half a dozen excellent descriptions or poignant accounts of personal experiences.

A historian is battling all the time to remember as much as possible.

I applied for funding to embark on an overseas field trip in Iceland, and spent six weeks there happily holed up in the national archives, museums and libraries, sifting through ministerial and parish records, censuses, maps, microfilm, logs, and local histories.

It can be a long gap between the emergence of fully researched historical biographies.

The only way to find out anything about what kinds of lives people led in any given period is to tunnel into their records and to let them speak for themselves.

To be a good researcher is to be a good detective, and I enjoy ferreting out tidbits of information. For a diary book like 'A Coal Miner's Bride,' newspapers come in handy for small everyday details such as weather reports.

I am not someone who believes I am going to find a historical scoop.

I don't read many popular histories like the ones I write. The building blocks for my research are scholarly monographs, and the inspiration for my storytelling style are folks like Chekhov.

One of the questions I face when working on a book about a historical event is whether I should visit the actual place that I'm writing about. No matter how scrupulously maintained a historic house or battlefield may be, it is nothing like it was in the long-ago past.

So research is a terribly imperfect science, and you learn an awful lot more after you've published a book, because people keep writing to you and saying, 'Oh, gosh, I was related to such and such a character and I have a letter in my possession.'

History consists of facts attested to by evidence.

Good history is a portal to the past.

One of the great challenges of being a modern historian is interviewing multiple people who were all there for something, some event. No one's version matches up 100% with other people's, even if it's three or four people on a conference call.