Historical Knowledge, Historical Error
A Contemporary Guide to Practice
Megill, Allan
Shepard, Steven (CON)
Honenberger, Phillip (CON)
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BOOK SUMMARY
In the past thirty years, historians have broadened the scope of their discipline to include many previously neglected topics and perspectives. They have chronicled language, madness, gender, and sexuality and have experimented with new forms of presentat
BOOK SYNOPSIS
In the past thirty years, historians have broadened the scope of their discipline to include many previously neglected topics and perspectives. They have chronicled language, madness, gender, and sexuality and have experimented with new forms of presentation. They have turned to the histories of non-Western peoples and to the troubled relations between the West and the rest. Allan Megill welcomes these developments, but he also suggests that there is now confusion among historians about what counts as a justified account of the past.
In Historical Knowledge, Historical Error, Megill dispels some of the confusion. Here, he discusses issues of narrative, objectivity, and memory. He attacks what he sees as irresponsible uses of evidence while accepting the art of speculation, which incomplete evidence forces upon historians. Along the way, he offers succinct accounts of the epistemological road historians have traveled from Herodotus and Thucydides through Leopold von Ranke and Alexis de Tocqueville, and on to Hayden White, Natalie Zemon Davis, and Lynn Hunt.
AUTHOR BIO
Allan Megill is professor of history at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida and Karl Marx: The Burden of Reason (Why Marx Rejected Politics and the Market), and editor of Rethinking Objectivity.
BOOK REVIEWS
"With this rigorous and lucid work, Megill has made a major contribution to the understanding of historical thought. . . . In brief, this is a work of exceptional value. Essential."--Choice
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History Books :: Historiography Books
MORE BOOK INFO
ISBN: 0226518302
ISBN(13-digit): 9780226518305
Dewey Decimal: 901
Library of Congress: 2006021624
Book Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr
Language: ENG
No. of Pages: 288
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