Books about Historiography from Amazon.com

This unprecedented book by one of Britain’s most admired historians describes the intellectual impact that the study and consideration of history has had in the Western world over the past 2,500 years.

Treating the practice of history not as an isolated pursuit but as an aspect of human society and an essential part of the culture of Europe and America, John Burrow magnificently brings to life and explains the distinctive qualities found in the work of historians from the ancient Egyptians and Greeks to the present, including Livy, Tacitus, Bede, Froissart, Clarendon, Gibbon, Macaulay, Michelet, Prescott and Parkman. The author sets out not to give us the history of academic discipline but a history of choices: the choice of pasts, and the ways they have been demarcated, investigated, presented and even sometimes learned from as they have changed according to political, religious, cultural, and (often most important) partisan and patriotic circumstances. Burrow aims, as well, to change our perceptions of the crucial turning points in the history of history, allowing the ideas that historians have had about both their own times and their founding civilizations to emerge with unexpected freshness.

Burrow argues that looking at the history of history is one of the most interesting ways we have to understand the past. Certainly, this volume stands alone in its ambition, scale and fascination.

.
Price: $20.11 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Winner of the American Book Award and the Oliver C. Cox
Anti-Racism Award of The American Sociological Association

Americans have lost touch with their history, and in Lies My Teacher Told Me Professor James Loewen shows why. After surveying eighteen leading high school American history texts, he has concluded that not one does a decent job of making history interesting or memorable. Marred by an embarrassing combination of blind patriotism, mindless optimism, sheer misinformation, and outright lies, these books omit almost all the ambiguity, passion, conflict, and drama from our past.

In this revised edition, packed with updated material, Loewen explores how historical myths continue to be perpetuated in today's climate and adds an eye-opening chapter on the lies surrounding 9/11 and the Iraq War. From the truth about Columbus's historic voyages to an honest evaluation of our national leaders, Loewen revives our history, restoring the vitality and relevance it truly possesses.

Thought provoking, nonpartisan, and often shocking, Loewen unveils the real America in this iconoclastic classic beloved by high school teachers, history buffs, and enlightened citizens across the country..
Price: $9.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

.
Price: $14.67 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Reflections on the historian's craft and its place in American culture, from a master craftsman

History is to society what memory is to the individual: without it, we don't know who we are, and we can't make wise decisions about where we should be going. But while the nature of memory is a constant, the nature of history has changed radically over the past forty years, for good but also for ill. In The Purpose of the Past, historian Gordon S. Wood examines the sea change in the field through considerations of some of its most important historians and their works. His book serves as both a history of American history-neither wholly a celebration nor a critique-and an argument for its ongoing necessity.

These are both the best of times and the worst of times for American history. New currents of thought have brought refreshing and vitally necessary changes to the discipline, expanding its compass to include previously underexamined and undervalued groups and subjects. At the same time, however, strains of extreme, even nihilistic, relativism have assaulted the relevance, even the legitimacy, of the historian's work. The divide between the work of academic and popular historians has widened into a chasm, separating some of the field's most important new ideas from what would give them much greater impact: any kind of real audience.

But The Purpose of the Past is not another crotchety elegy for what history once was but sadly now isn't; it is also a celebration of what, at its best, it is, and a powerful argument for its ongoing necessity. Along the way The Purpose of the Past offers wonderful insight into what great historians do, and how they can stumble, and what strains of thought have dominated the marketplace of ideas in historical scholarship. A master historian's commanding assessment of his field, The Purpose of the Past will enlarge the capacity to appreciate history of anyone who reads it.
Price: $13.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A landmark publication in the history of American letters, and a unique opportunity to celebrate the legacy of the one of the great public intellectuals of our time.

For more than a half century, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was at the vital center of American political and cultural life. From his entrance into political leadership circles in the 1950s through his years in the Kennedy White House and up until his very last days, he was that rare thing, a master historian who enjoyed an extraordinary eyewitness vantage on history as it was being made. On intimate terms with many of the most prominent political, cultural and intellectual figures of the last fifty years, he was a man whose proximity to power never obscured his appreciation for the reality of those who have none. For that capacity for empathy and for much else, he was often called American liberalism's greatest voice.

For most of his adult life, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. dutifully recorded his experiences and opinions in journals that, until now, have never been seen. Edited by his oldest sons, they offer remarkably fresh and lucid observations on a half century of public life, and a rare and privileged view into the mind of one of America's most distinguished men of letters. Frank, revelatory, suffused with wit and humanity, these entries offer an intimate history of postwar America, from his days on Adlai Stevenson's campaign team to his years in JFK and RFK's inner circle, through to the election of George W. Bush. They contain his candid reminiscences about many of the signal events of our time - the Bay of Pigs, the devastating assassinations of the 1960s, Vietnam, Watergate, the fall of the Soviet Union, Bush v. Gore. These journals also offer an extraordinary window into the lives of the wide range of politicians, intellectuals, writers and actors who were his friends - from the Kennedys to the Clintons, from Henry Kissinger to Adlai Stevenson, from Norman Mailer to Lauren Bacall. Together they form an astonishingly vivid portrait of American politics and culture in the second half of the 20th century - one that only a man who knew everyone and missed nothing, could provide.

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was one of America's greatest moral and intellectual forces, and the publication of his journals is both itself an epic event in the history of American letters, and a fitting opportunity to celebrate this most remarkable American life..
Price: $13.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Evidence Explained is the definitive guide to the citation and analysis of historical sources. It begins with a simple question: Why do we invest so much of our energy into the citation of sources? Followed by the intriguing answer: Because all sources are not created equal. As a citation guide, Evidence Explained is built on this simple question and answer. According to the author, there are no historical resources we can trust at face value. Records simply offer evidence, and their assertions may or may not be true. To decide what actually happened, we must understand those records. To analyze that evidence and judge what to believe, we also need particular facts about those records. Thus, Evidence Explained has two principal uses: it provides citation models for most historical sources especially original materials not covered by classic citation guides such as The Chicago Manual of Style. Beyond that it can help us understand each type of record and identify each in such detail that we and our readers will know not only where to go to find our source, but, equally important, the nature of that source so that the evidence can be better interpreted and the accuracy of our conclusions properly appraised. Highlights Covers all contemporary and electronic sources not discussed in traditional style manuals, including digital, audio, and video sources Explains citation principals and includes more than 1,000 citation models for virtually every source type Shows readers where to go to find their sources and how to describe them and evaluate them Teaches readers to separate facts from assertions and theory from proof in the evaluation of evidence. Most importantly, Evidence Explained discusses source citations for every known class of records, including microfilm and microfiche, and records created by the new digital media: Websites Blogs Digital books and journals DVDs CDs Audio files Podcasts Everyone Needs This Book -Carry it around and consult it for the correct citation of any source you come across -Keep it constantly at your side to help you identify sources -Use it to evaluate digital and Internet sources -Make it your standard for citing sources and evaluating evidence in your day-to-day research.
Price: $49.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic..
Price: $4.60 [Notify me when price goes down.]

When does history begin? What characterizes it? This brilliant and beautifully written book dissolves the logic of a beginning based on writing, civilization, or historical consciousness and offers a model for a history that escapes the continuing grip of the Judeo-Christian time frame. Daniel Lord Smail argues that in the wake of the Decade of the Brain and the best-selling historical work of scientists like Jared Diamond, the time has come for fundamentally new ways of thinking about our past. He shows how recent work in evolution and paleohistory makes it possible to join the deep past with the recent past and abandon, once and for all, the idea of prehistory. Making an enormous literature accessible to the general reader, he lays out a bold new case for bringing neuroscience and neurobiology into the realm of history..
Price: $13.21 [Notify me when price goes down.]