Essential Historiography Reader, The, 1st edition

For courses in Historiography. This textbook/reader not only details the history of historical practice and explains historical theories and philosophies in language that is accessible to college undergraduates, it also provides excerpts to illustrate these historical approaches and help students to identify them in their own writing and in the writings of contemporary historians. 

The book is organized into two main parts. The first part traces the origins of contemporary American historical traditions to their roots in ancient Greece and explains how the profession of history emerged and developed in Europe and America through the nineteenth century. The second part focuses more specifically on historiographical developments the United States since the nineteenth century.

• Explicitly devoted to supporting historiography education at the undergraduate level
• The first section of each chapter focuses on historical theories, methods, and developments.
• Key concepts and historians are noted in the margins, where space is provided for note-taking
• The second section of each chapter contains excerpts from the works of important historians described in the first section. These excerpts are reproduced exactly as they were originally written (or translated, as the case may be), including any citations included in the original works.
• Enables students to see the types of sources and methodology used in the excerpts
• The last excerpt in all but the first chapter illustrates how one prominent historian applied the approaches discussed in the first section of the chapter to the topic of the American Revolution.
  • Enables students to see how historiography and historical context shapes the written history of a topic familiar to most American students
• Questions for Consideration are included for each excerpt to help guide student reading and thinking.
• Critical Analysis Worksheets provided in Appendix A enable students to take notes on the excerpts and dissect them.
  • By critically analyzing the excerpts, students can gain a deeper understanding of various theoretical frameworks and methodologies, and can decide for themselves which of these approaches are the most promising or flawed.
• An epilogue discusses trends in American historiography since the 1990s, trends which continue to influence current historians and shape the environment in which history students now live and work.
• Following the epilogue, a sample historiographical review essay of the American Revolution is provided to illustrate how one might use the American Revolution excerpts in an actual historiographical essay.
• A bibliography is provided at the end of the book for those who wish to do further research on the topics discussed in each chapter.