Nature Of History Reader, The New Ed.

Description: The question of what the nature of history is, is now a key issue for all students of history. It is now recognised by many that the past and history are different phenomena and that the way the past is actively historicised can be highly problematic and contested. Older metaphysical, ontological, epistemological, methodological and ethical assumptions can no longer be taken as read. In this timely collection, key pieces of writing by leading historians are reproduced and evaluated, with an explanation and critique of their character and assumptions, and how they reflect upon the nature of the history project. The authors respond to the view that the nature of history has become so disparate in assumption, approach and practice as to require an informed guide that is both self-reflexive, engaged, critical and innovative. This work seeks to aid a positive re-thinking of history today, and will be of use both to students and to their teachers.



Contents: Introduction Part One: Reconstructionism 1 Geoffrey Elton, Return to Essentials 2 Deborah A Symonds, 'Living in the Scottish Record Office' 3 Edward Royle, Modern Britain: A Social History, 1750-1997 4 George Brown Tindall and David E. Shi, America: A Narrative History 5 David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere's Ride 6 Luigi Albertini, The Origins of the War of 1914 7 David Loades, The Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government and Religion in England, 1553-58 8 John Hassan, A History of Water in Modern England and Wales 9 Michael A.R. Graves, Elizabethan Parliaments 1559-1601 10 Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age Part Two: Constructionism 11 Peter Hoffer and William Stueck, Reading and Writing American History: An Introduction to the Historian's Craft 12 Eric Hobsbawm, On History 13 John Tosh, The Pursuit of History 14 Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations 15 Gwynne Lewis The French Revolution: Rethinking the Debate 16 David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class 17 John MacKenzie, Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts 18 Jan P. Nederveen Pieterse, Empire and Emancipation: Power and Liberation on a World Scale 19 Thomas W. Smith, History and International Relations 20 Charles More, Understanding the Industrial Revolution 21 Richard F. Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859-1877 22 John Tosh, 'What Should Historians do with Masculinity? Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Britain' 23 Marion Gibson, Reading Witchcraft: Stories of Early English Witches 24 Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History 25 Mark S.R. Jenner, 'The Great Dog Massacre' Part Three: Deconstructionism 26 Greg Dening, 'Performing On the Beaches of the Mind: An Essay', History and Theory 27 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project 28 Richard Price, First Time 29 Robert A. Rosenstone, The Man Who Swam Into History 30 Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, In 1926: Living At The Edge of Time 31 Sven Linqvist, A History of Bombing 32 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe 33 Hayden White, Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect 34 Iain Chambers, Culture After Humanism 35 Jaques Derrida Deconstructions: The Im-possible Part Four: Endisms 36 David Roberts, Nothing But History 37 Carolyn Steedman, 'About Ends: On How the End is Different From an Ending' 38 Joan Scott, 'After History?' 39 Rita Felski 'Fin de Siecle, Fin de sex: Transexuality, Postmodernism and the Death of History' 40 Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth, "Beyond 'The Subject'" 41 David Harlan, The Degradation of American History 42 Dipesh Chakrabarty, "The Death of History", from Public Culture 43 Jean Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Explained to Children 44 Jean Baudrillard, The End of the Millennium