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Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Third Edition

Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Third Edition
By Ernst Breisach

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Product Description

In this pioneering work, Ernst Breisach presents an effective, well-organized, and concise account of the development of historiography in Western culture. Neither a handbook nor an encyclopedia, this up-to-date third edition narrates and interprets the development of historiography from its origins in Greek poetry to the present, with compelling sections on postmodernism, deconstructionism, African-American history, women’s history, microhistory, the Historikerstreit, cultural history, and more. The definitive look at the writing of history by a historian, Historiography provides key insights into some of the most important issues, debates and innovations in modern historiography.

Praise for the first edition: “Breisach’s comprehensive coverage of the subject and his clear presentation of the issues and the complexity of an evolving discipline easily make his work the best of its kind.”—Lester D. Stephens, American Historical Review

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #46902 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-12-30
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 500 pages

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ernst Breisach is professor emeritus of history at Western Michigan University and the author of several books, including American Progressive History: An Experiment in Modernization and On the Future of History: The Postmodernist Challenge and Its Aftermath, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Customer Reviews

Well researched, readable, and comprehensive.5
I completely disagree with the last two reviewers. This is possibly the finest and most thorough book ever written on the history of history in a single volume. Sure, the author's style of writing is not "on the edge of your seat" entertaining, but it is an academic book written for an academic audience or at least a more scholarly focused one. I found Breisach work readable and accessible unlike other works I have read such as Michael Bentley's, Modern Historiography, which is very difficult to read on a number of levels.

The whole idea that "this is a history of historiography for ideological conservatives, and religious reactionaries and not a sober and lucid book on the subject" is utter nonsense to say the least. Breisach's covers the different time periods where Christians wrote history and they wrote from a Christian worldview. The fact that because some of Breisach's work surveys Christian-based historiography somehow makes it a book written for conservatives and religious reactionaries is bogus. Breisach surveys plenty of non-Christian historiography as well which does not make this a work for unbelievers only.

This book is very well researched, readable, and comprehensive for anyone interested in the subject of Historiography. This book is also considered a standard and authoritative text on the subject matter in the academic world. Find me a University that has a historiography class where this book is not used? Need I say more?

Not even interesting to someone working towards a Master's in history1
Breisach's long and detailed account of the history of the study of history reads like an uninspired textbook, except it isn't as exciting. This book spends the vast majority of its pages listing one historian after another and the particular work that they wrote. A good study of historiography should spend plenty of time explaining the ideology behind the various schools of thought in history, and then use a couple of particularly telling examples and excerpts to help the reader understand the movement. This book works to the opposite extreme, it gives thousands upon thousands of different examples, but you have to look long and hard for details about why any of it is relevant. In the end, the effect is to make this entire book nearly irrelevant.

Perfect...thank you5
This text was in perfect condition. Also, thank you for your urgency I recieved it in record time:)