hannna's review against another edition
Needed to read for school but never finished.
bookishfelix5's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
5.0
redbecca's review against another edition
4.0
I'm teaching this book in a graduate seminar on research methods, so I may have to update this review based on student response. I respect Evans as a historian, and chose to teach this book after having side-lined it a few years ago because of his important work in the Lipstadt/Irving trial. In fact, I wish that Evans would update the book to reflect his experiences as an expert witness in that trial. As it is, the book relates concerns among historians about postmodern philosophy in a way that I think will be good fodder for students. The argument, while sometimes a bit "stodgy" attempts to be even-handed in describing elements of postmodernism that have improved historical writing while also criticizing what Evans dubs "extreme relativism". One thing I appreciated when I first read the book, is that he critiques the representation of the historical profession among philosophers of history who only ever seem to write about historians of the 19th and early 20th centuries, as if there had been no changes in historical methods of research or writing since that time.
redbecca's review against another edition
3.0
There are elements to this book that I really liked, and which I found potentially useful for teaching, particularly chapter three, "Historians and their Facts"; chapter five on theories of causality, and the concluding essay on objectivity and its limits. Critics of the book describing the author as an unreconstructed Rankean are missing what makes this a good general book on historical methods.
However, it doesn't work as a teaching text because it's now dated. It would be great to see a new edition. I would like to think that the extreme versions of post-modernism that the book targets have lost their influence, but the book is not so dated as to be irrelevant.
There are some errors. Early on he confuses Einstein's theory of general relativity with an overly generalized paraphrasing of the "observer effect". He also caricatures feminist and multicultural critiques of euro-centrism in history, which shows he doesn't do the kind of justice to original sources that he argues for. His characterization of E.H. Carr's history of the USSR as "Stalinist" is unfortunate, because Carr's historical practice, regardless of his own political preferences, was such that many anti-Stalinist historians rely on his work. Seeing Carr's work despite Carr's own stated politics would have been a point in favor of his overall argument, that a responsible method of handling evidence does produce better history regardless of the historian's own proclivities.
Despite all that, Evans makes very useful critiques and observations about the state of historical writing in the 1990s, such as the degree of specialization & the growing interest in intellectual history at the expense of social history that resulted from the "linguistic turn." His critique of Hayden White and his influence is excellent and still highly relevant, indeed necessary, since it seems like Hayden White is the only historian some literary critics have ever read.
update after 2nd time teaching this book: I've decided the book still works as a teaching text, especially if you can use the afterward to the revised British edition (Granta, 200o) along with some of the reviews to work with students on addressing questions about how to use source material and consider the book as a historical document of the 1990s.
However, it doesn't work as a teaching text because it's now dated. It would be great to see a new edition. I would like to think that the extreme versions of post-modernism that the book targets have lost their influence, but the book is not so dated as to be irrelevant.
There are some errors. Early on he confuses Einstein's theory of general relativity with an overly generalized paraphrasing of the "observer effect". He also caricatures feminist and multicultural critiques of euro-centrism in history, which shows he doesn't do the kind of justice to original sources that he argues for. His characterization of E.H. Carr's history of the USSR as "Stalinist" is unfortunate, because Carr's historical practice, regardless of his own political preferences, was such that many anti-Stalinist historians rely on his work. Seeing Carr's work despite Carr's own stated politics would have been a point in favor of his overall argument, that a responsible method of handling evidence does produce better history regardless of the historian's own proclivities.
Despite all that, Evans makes very useful critiques and observations about the state of historical writing in the 1990s, such as the degree of specialization & the growing interest in intellectual history at the expense of social history that resulted from the "linguistic turn." His critique of Hayden White and his influence is excellent and still highly relevant, indeed necessary, since it seems like Hayden White is the only historian some literary critics have ever read.
update after 2nd time teaching this book: I've decided the book still works as a teaching text, especially if you can use the afterward to the revised British edition (Granta, 200o) along with some of the reviews to work with students on addressing questions about how to use source material and consider the book as a historical document of the 1990s.
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