Book description
In this book, now published in 10 languages, a preeminent intellectual
historian examines the profound changes in ideas about the nature of
history and historiography. Georg G. Iggers traces the basic assumptions
upon which historical research and writing have been based, and
describes how the newly emerging social sciences transformed
historiography following World War II. The discipline's greatest
challenge may have come in the last two decades, when postmodern ideas
forced a reevaluation of the relationship of historians to their subject
and questioned the very possibility of objective history. Iggers sees
the contemporary discipline as a hybrid, moving away from a classical,
macrohistorical approach toward microhistory, cultural history, and the
history of everyday life. The new epilogue, by the author, examines the
movement away from postmodernism towards new social science approaches
that give greater attention to cultural factors and to the problems of
globalization. "No one looking for a well-informed introduction
to some of the key views of history adopted by professional historians
over the last century or so...could find a better one than this."
--Richard J. Evans, History and Theory GEORG G. IGGERS is an
internationally recognized authority on intellectual history and
comparative international historiography. He is the author of New
Directions in Historiography (1975, 1985) and The German Conception of
History (1968, 1983), both published by Wesleyan University Press.
Iggers is Distinguished Professor of History emeritus at the State
University of New York at Buffalo.
