"Treating the practice of history not as an isolated pursuit but as an aspect of human society and an essential part of the culture of the West, John Burrow magnificently brings to life and explains the distinctive qualities found in the work of historians from the ancient Egyptians and Greeks to the present. With a light step and graceful narrative, he gathers together over 2,500 years of the moments and decisions that have helped create Western identity. This unique approach is an incredible lens with which to view the past. Standing alone in its ambition, scale and fascination, Burrow's history of history is certain to stand the test of time. " (Publisher's Website)

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction: A history of histories?

Prologue: Keeping Records and Making Accounts: Egypt and Babylon

Part I - GREECE

1. Herodotus: The Great Invasion and the Historian's Task

2. Thucydides: The Polis - The Use and Abuse of Power

3. The Greeks in Asia
Xenophon: The Persian Expedition
The Alexander Historians: Arrian and Curtius Rufus

Part II - ROME

4. Polybius: Universal History, Pragmatic History and the Rise of Rome

5. Sallust: A City for Sale

6. Livy: From the Foundation of the City

7. Civil War and the Road to Autocracy: Plutarch, Appian and Cassius Dio

8. Tacitus: "Men fit to be slaves"

9. A Provincial Perspective: Josephus on the Jewish Revolt

10. Ammianus Marcellinus: The last Pagan Historian

11. General Characteristics of Ancient Historiography

Part III - CHRISTENDOM

12. The Bible and History: The People of God

13. Eusebius: The Making of Orthodoxy and the Church Triumphant

14. Gregory of Tours: Kings, Bishops and Others

15. Bede: The English Church and the English People

Part IV - THE REVIVAL OF SECULAR HISTORY

16. Annals, Chronicles and History
Annals and Chronicles
Pseudo-History: Geoffrey of Monmouth
Secular History and Chronicle: William of Malmesbury's modern History and the Scurrilities of Matthew Paris
Two Abbey Chronicles: St. Albans and Bury St. Edmunds

17. Crusader History and Chivalric History: Villehardouin and Froissart
Villehardouin's ''The Conquest of Constantinople''
Froissart: ''Matters of Great Renown''

18. From Civic Chronicle to Humanist History: Villani, Machiaveli and Guicciardini

Part V - STUDYING THE PAST
19. Antiquarianism, Legal History and the Dicovery of Feudalism
20. Clarendon's History of the Rebellion: The Wilfulness of Particular Men

21. Philosophic History
Hume: Enthusiasm and Regicide
Robertson: ''The State of Society'' and the Idea of Europe
Gibbon: Rome, Barbarism and Civilization

22. Revolutions: England and France
Macaulay: The Glorius Revolution
Carlyle's French Revolution: History With a Hundred Tongues
Michelet and Taine: The People and the Mob

23. History as the Story of Freedom: Constitutionnal Liberty and Individual Autonomy
Strubbs's Constitutionnal History: From Township to Parliament
Modernity's First-born Son: Burckhardt's Renaissance Man

24. A New World: American Experiences
The Halls of Montezuma: Diaz, Prescott and the Conquest of New Spain
Outposts in the Wilderness: Parkman's History of the Great West Henry Adams: From Republic to Nation

25. A Professional Consensus: The German Influence
Professionalisation
German Historicism: Ranke, God and Machiavelli
Not Quite a Copernican Revolution

26. The Twentieth Century
Professionalism and the Critique of 'Whig History'. History as a Science and History as an Art
'Structures': Cultural History and the Annales School
Marxism: The Last Grand Narrative?
Anthropology and History: Languages and Paradigms
Supressed Identities and Global Perspectives: World History and Micro-History

Select Bibliography

Index