The Pursuit of History

Author: John Tosh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317542002
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 411

Book Description
This classic introduction to the study of history invites the reader to stand back and consider some of its most fundamental questions - what is the point of studying history? How do we know about the past? Does an objective historical truth exist and can we ever access it? In answering these central questions, John Tosh argues that, despite the impression of fragmentation created by postmodernism in recent years, history is a coherent discipline which still bears the imprint of its nineteenth-century origins. Consistently clear-sighted, he provides a lively and compelling guide to a complex and sometimes controversial subject, while making his readers vividly aware of just how far our historical knowledge is conditioned by the character of the sources and the methods of the historians who work on them. The sixth edition has been revised and updated with key new material including: - a brand new chapter on public history - sections on digitised sources and historical controversy - discussion of topics including transnational history and the nature of the archive - an expanded range of examples and case studies - a comprehensive companion website providing valuable supporting material, study questions and a bank of primary sources. Lucid and engaging, this edition retains all the user-friendly features that have helped to make this book a favourite with both students and lecturers, including marginal glosses, illustrations and suggestions for further reading. Along with its companion website, this is an essential guide to the theory and practice of history.

The Pursuit of Power

Author: Richard J. Evans
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241295777
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1071

Book Description
ECONOMIST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2016 'A scintillating, encyclopaedic history, rich in detail from the arcane to the familiar... a veritable tour de force' Richard Overy, New Statesman 'Transnational history at its finest ... .. social, political and cultural themes swirl together in one great canvas of immense detail and beauty' Gerard DeGroot, The Times 'Dazzlingly erudite and entertaining' Dominic Sandbrook, The Sunday Times A masterpiece which brings to life an extraordinarly turbulent and dramatic era of revolutionary change. The Pursuit of Power draws on a lifetime of thinking about nineteenth-century Europe to create an extraordinarily rich, surprising and entertaining panorama of a continent undergoing drastic transformation. The book aims to reignite the sense of wonder that permeated this remarkable era, as rulers and ruled navigated overwhelming cultural, political and technological changes. It was a time where what was seen as modern with amazing speed appeared old-fashioned, where huge cities sprang up in a generation, new European countries were created and where, for the first time, humans could communicate almost instantly over thousands of miles. In the period bounded by the Battle of Waterloo and the outbreak of World War I, Europe dominated the rest of the world as never before or since: this book breaks new ground by showing how the continent shaped, and was shaped by, its interactions with other parts of the globe. Richard Evans explores fully the revolutions, empire-building and wars that marked the nineteenth century, but the book is about so much more, whether it is illness, serfdom, religion or philosophy. The Pursuit of Power is a work by a historian at the height of his powers: essential for anyone trying to understand Europe, then or now.

The Pursuit of Equality in American History

Author: Jack Richon Pole
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520032866
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Book Description
The author looks to the origins of equality in Greek thought and the idea's important in the eighteenth century to understand the tenacious attraction it has had for American over more than two hundred years of political, legal, and social controversy.

The Pursuit of Happiness in the Founding Era

Author: Carli N. Conklin
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826274277
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
Scholars have long debated the meaning of the pursuit of happiness, yet have tended to define it narrowly, focusing on a single intellectual tradition, and on the use of the term within a single text, the Declaration of Independence. In this insightful volume, Carli Conklin considers the pursuit of happiness across a variety of intellectual traditions, and explores its usage in two key legal texts of the Founding Era, the Declaration and William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. For Blackstone, the pursuit of happiness was a science of jurisprudence, by which his students could know, and then rightly apply, the first principles of the Common Law. For the founders, the pursuit of happiness was the individual right to pursue a life lived in harmony with the law of nature and a public duty to govern in accordance with that law. Both applications suggest we consider anew how the phrase, and its underlying legal philosophies, were understood in the founding era. With this work, Conklin makes important contributions to the fields of early American intellectual and legal history.

Why History Matters

Author: John Tosh
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350307513
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Book Description
Does history matter? Is it anything more than entertainment? And if so, what practical relevance does it have? In this fully revised second edition of a seminal text, John Tosh persuasively argues that history is central to an informed and critical understanding of topical issues in the present. Including a range of contemporary examples from Brexit to child sexual abuse to the impact of the internet, this is an important and practical introduction for all students of history. Inspiring and empowering, this book provides both students and general readers with a stimulating and practical rationale for the study of history. It is essential reading for all undergraduate students of history who require an engaging introduction to the subject. New to this Edition: - Illustrative examples and case studies are fully updated - Features a postscript on British historians and Brexit - Bibliography is heavily revised

History and the Human Condition

Author: John Lukacs
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1497636329
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Book Description
In a career spanning more than sixty-five years, John Lukacs has established himself as one of our most accomplished historians. Now, in the stimulating book History and the Human Condition, Lukacs offers his profound reflections on the very nature of history, the role of the historian, the limits of knowledge, and more. Guiding us on a quest for knowledge, Lukacs ranges far and wide over the past two centuries. The pursuit takes us from Alexis de Tocqueville to the atomic bomb, from American “exceptionalism” to Nazi expansionism, from the closing of the American frontier to the passing of the modern age. Lukacs’s insights about the past have important implications for the present and future. In chronicling the twentieth-century decline of liberalism and rise of conservatism, for example, he forces us to rethink the terms of the liberal-versus-conservative debate. In particular, he shows that what passes for “conservative” in the twenty-first century often bears little connection to true conservatism. Lukacs concludes by shifting his gaze from the broad currents of history to the world immediately around him. His reflections on his home, his town, his career, and his experiences as an immigrant to the United States illuminate deeper truths about America, the unique challenges of modernity, the sense of displacement and atomization that increasingly characterizes twenty-first-century life, and much more. Moving and insightful, this closing section focuses on the human in history, masterfully displaying how right Lukacs is in his contention that history, at its best, is personal and participatory. History and the Human Condition is a fascinating work by one of the finest historians of our time. More than that, it is perhaps John Lukacs’s final word on the great themes that have defined him as a historian and a writer.

Historians on History

Author: John Tosh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351586629
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
Bringing together in one volume the key writings of many of the major historians from the last few decades, Historians on History provides an overview of the evolving nature of historical enquiry, illuminating the political, social and personal assumptions that have governed and sustained historical theory and practice. John Tosh’s Reader begins with a substantial introductory survey charting the course of historiographical developments since the second half of the nineteenth century. He explores both the academic mainstream and more radical voices within the discipline. The text is composed of readings by historians such as Braudel, Carr, Elton, Guha, Hobsbawm, Scott and Jordanova. This third edition has been brought up to date by taking the 1960s as its starting point. It now includes more recent topics like public history, microhistory and global history, in addition to established fields like Marxist history, gender history and postcolonialism. Historians on History is essential reading for all students of historiography and historical theory.

The Pursuit of Italy

Author: David Gilmour
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466801549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 670

Book Description
One of The Economist's Books of the Year A provocative, entertaining account of Italy's diverse riches, its hopes and dreams, its past and present Did Garibaldi do Italy a disservice when he helped its disparate parts achieve unity? Was the goal of political unification a mistake? The question is asked and answered in a number of ways in The Pursuit of Italy, an engaging, original consideration of the many histories that contribute to the brilliance—and weakness—of Italy today. David Gilmour's wonderfully readable exploration of Italian life over the centuries is filled with provocative anecdotes as well as personal observations, and is peopled by the great figures of the Italian past—from Cicero and Virgil to the controversial politicians of the twentieth century. His wise account of the Risorgimento debunks the nationalistic myths that surround it, though he paints a sympathetic portrait of Giuseppe Verdi, a beloved hero of the era. Gilmour shows that the glory of Italy has always lain in its regions, with their distinctive art, civic cultures, identities, and cuisines. Italy's inhabitants identified themselves not as Italians but as Tuscans and Venetians, Sicilians and Lombards, Neapolitans and Genoese. Italy's strength and culture still come from its regions rather than from its misconceived, mishandled notion of a unified nation.

The Pursuit of Glory

Author: T. C. W. Blanning
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780670063208
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 764

Book Description
An accessible chronicle of European history from the end of the Thirty Years' War to the Battle of Waterloo features vivid coverage of such events as the Enlightenment period, the French Revolution, and the Napoleonic era.

The Pursuit of Human Well-Being

Author: Richard J. Estes
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319391011
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 829

Book Description
This handbook informs the reader about how much progress we, the human race, have made in enhancing the quality of life on this planet. Many skeptics focus on how the quality of life has deteriorated over the course of human history, particularly given World War II and its aftermath. This handbook provides a positive perspective on the history of well-being. Quality of life, as documented by scientists worldwide, has significantly improved. Nevertheless, one sees more improvements in well-being in some regions of the world than in others. Why? This handbook documents the progress of well-being in the various world regions as well as the differences in those regions. The broad questions that the handbook addresses include: What does well-being mean? How do different philosophical and religious traditions interpret the concept of well-being within their own context? Has well-being remained the same over different historical epochs and for different regions and subregions of the world? In which areas of human development have we been most successful in advancing individual and collective well-being? In which sectors has the attainment of well-being proven most difficult? How does well-being differ within and between different populations groups that, for a variety of socially created reasons, have been the most disadvantaged (e.g., children, the aged, women, the poor, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities)?