Law enforcement search for armed suspect, Vance Boelter, in fatal shooting of Minnesota lawmaker.

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

 tackles your book questions, big and small. Ask 

This week's question comes from Slate Magazine, which asked: 

broke down the history genre by the numbers

. It surveyed more than 600 books of popular history published last year, and found several striking gender trends. The findings include:

• 75.8 percent of all history titles published had male authors

• Of the books classified as biographies, 71.7 percent were written about men

• Female biographers were far more likely to write about other women: 69 percent of female biographers wrote about female subjects

• Only six percent of male biographers wrote about women

So, the numbers do suggest that history is being written about men, by men. Several publishers confirmed this trend with Slate. Lara Heimert, the publisher of Basic Books, told Slate: "There is no question that there is a real problem with gender imbalance in trade history publishing. It is something I worry about a lot."

There are, of course, authors who defy these trends. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Stacey Schiff, Karen Armstrong, to name just a few, are hailed as heavyweights in the history field. When you look at just the numbers though, the discrepancy in authorship — and in subjects — is difficult to ignore.

The next step would be to analyze who is buying popular history books. Last January, MarketWatch 

 from the National Endowment for the Arts, saying:

This would suggest that not only are men writing about men, they're also writing 

 men, who are more likely to pick up nonfiction titles. That sparks yet another question: Would women be more likely to read nonfiction titles if a greater number were written by women or about women? 

It's a trend to look for in the coming years.

Tracy Mumford

Author

Slate Magazine analyzed more than 600 popular history books published last year, and confirmed a trend: The majority of authors in the field are men, and they're writing about other men.

From Slate: Is history written about men, by men?

Go Deeper.

Like this?