βNo one looking for a well-informed introduction toΒ .Β Β . the key views of history adopted by professional historiansΒ .Β Β . could find a better one than this.β βRichard J. Evans, author ofΒ In Defence ofΒ History
A broad perspective on historical thought and writing, with a new epilogue.
In this book, now published in ten languages, a preeminent intellectual historian examines the profound changes in ideas about the nature of history and historiography. Georg G. Iggers traces the basic assumptions upon which historical research and writing have been based, and describes how the newly emerging social sciences transformed historiography following World War II. The disciplineβs greatest challenge may have come in the last two decades, when postmodern ideas forced a reevaluation of the relationship of historians to their subject and questioned the very possibility of objective history. Iggers sees the contemporary discipline as a hybrid, moving away from a classical, macrohistorical approach toward microhistory, cultural history, and the history of everyday life. The new epilogue, by the author, examines the movement away from postmodernism towards new social science approaches that give greater attention to cultural factors and to the problems of globalization.
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βThe book has all the virtues one associates with Georg Iggersβlucidity, detachment, balance, and the ability to reveal the relation between trends in historical writing and their political and cultural contexts.β βPeter Burke, Cambridge University