![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Richard Evanss In Defense of History not only defends historians from these fashionable barbs, but shows how the discipline is adapting to this assault on its empiricist base. "Essential reading for coming generations."-Keith Thomas. Historys claims to objective knowledge have recently been critiqued by post-foundationalists who argue that facts cannot exist outside of the 'prison house' of language. Evans brings "a remarkable range, a nose for the archives, a taste for controversy, and a fluent pen" (The New Republic) to this splendid work. Evans defends this commitment to historical knowledge from the attacks of postmodernist critics who see all judgments as subjective. To materials that are frustratingly meager, or overwhelmingly profuse, they bring an array of tools that range from agreed-upon rules of documentation and powerful computer models to the skilled investigator's sudden insight, all employed with the aim of reconstructing a verifiable, usable past. Evans shows us how historians manage to extract meaning from the recalcitrant past. So while Johnson is correct to say the book defends history as an academic discipline, principally against its critics within the academy, he is wrong to say it represents in so doing the swansong of a declining elite, and wrong to say that it has no application to non-academic versions of history. In his compact, intriguing survey, Richard J. ![]() Carr's "What Is History?", a classic introduction to the field, may now give way to a worthy successor. A master practitioner gives us an entertaining tour of the historian's workshop and a spirited defense of the search for historical truth. ![]()
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