Why History?: A History

What is the point of history? Why has the study of the past been so important for so long? Why History? A History contemplates two and a half thousand years of historianship to establish how very different thinkers in diverse contexts have conceived their activities, and to illustrate the
purposes that their historical investigations have served. Whether considering Herodotus, medieval religious exegesis, or twentieth-century cultural history, at the core of this work is the way that the present has been conceived to relate to the past. Alongside many changes in technique and
philosophy, Donald Bloxham's book reveals striking long-term continuities in justifications for the discipline.


Author: Donald Bloxham
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 09/02/2020
Pages: 416
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.70lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.10w x 1.10d
ISBN13: 9780198858720
ISBN10: 0198858728
BISAC Categories:
- History | World | General
- History | Historiography

About the Author

Donald Bloxham, Professor of Modern History, University of Edinburgh

Donald Bloxham has taught at Edinburgh University since 2001. He was appointed Professor of Modern History in 2007 and given the established Richard Pares Chair of History in 2011. Beyond his work on the history and philosophy of the discipline of history, he is a specialist in the study of genocide
and the punishment of perpetrators of genocide. His book, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford, 2005), won the Raphael Lemkin Prize for genocide scholarship. He has also been a recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize and is
currently on a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship.