"What is historiography?" asked the American historian Carl Becker in 1938. Professional historians continue to argue over the meaning of the term. This book challenges the view of historiography as an esoteric subject by presenting an accessible and concise overview of the history of historical writing from the Renaissance to the present. Historiography plays an integral role in aiding undergraduate students to better understand the nature and purpose of historical analysis more generally by examining the many conflicting ways that historians have defined and approached history. By demonstrating how these historians have differed in both their interpretations of specific historical events and their definitions of history itself, this book conveys to students the interpretive character of history as a discipline and the way that the historian's context and subjective perspective influence his or her understanding of the past.

The essential primer on the complexities of history writing, and writing history.

Fifty Key Works of History and Historiography introduces some of the most important works ever written by those who have sought to understand, capture, query and interpret the past. The works covered include texts from ancient times to the present day and from different cultural traditions ensuring a wide variety of schools, methods and ideas are introduced. Each of the fifty texts represents at least one of six broad categories: early examples of historiography (e.g. Herodotus and Augustine) non-western works (e.g. Shaddad and Fukuzawa) ‘Critical’ historiography (e.g. Mabillon and Ranke) history of minorities, neglected groups or subjects (e.g. Said and Needham) broad sweeps of history (e.g. Mumford and Hofstadter) problematic or unconventional historiography (e.g. Foucault and White). Each of the key works is introduced in a short essay written in a lively and engaging style which provides the ideal preparation for reading the text itself. Complete with a substantial introduction to the field, this book is the perfect starting point for anyone new to the study of history or historiography.

What distinguishes history as a discipline from other fields of study? That's the animating question of Sarah Maza’s Thinking About History, a general introduction to the field of history that revels in its eclecticism and highlights the inherent tensions and controversies that shape it. Designed for the classroom, Thinking About History is organized around big questions: Whose history do we write, and how does that affect what stories get told and how they are told? How did we come to view the nation as the inevitable context for history, and what happens when we move outside those boundaries? What is the relation among popular, academic, and public history, and how should we evaluate sources? What is the difference between description and interpretation, and how do we balance them? Maza provides choice examples in place of definitive answers, and the result is a book that will spark classroom discussion and offer students a view of history as a vibrant, ever-changing field of inquiry that is thoroughly relevant to our daily lives.

Modern Historiography is the essential introduction to the history of historical writing. It explains the broad philosophical background to the different historians and historical schools of the modern era, from James Boswell and Thomas Carlyle through to Lucien Febure and Eric Hobsbawm and surveys: the Enlightenment and Counter Enlightenment Romanticism the voice of Science and the process of secularization within Western intellectual thought the influence of, and broadening contact with, the New World the Annales school in France Postmodernism. Modern Historiography provides a clear and concise account of this modern period of historical writing.

Starting with an examination of how historians work, this "Very Short Introduction" aims to explore history in a general, pithy, and accessible manner, rather than to delve into specific periods.

For undergraduate courses in historiography. Good supplemental text for American History or Western Civilization or similar survey courses. As a survey of historical thinking in the West from ancient times to the present, this accessible text focuses on historiography, philosophy of history, and historical methodology, introducing the main issues to beginning students with thorough and balanced discussions.