Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
What is history to you
Importance of historians
What is history to you
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: What is history to you
History is something we live with everyday. It happens every second in every part of the world. It’s been happening for centuries. Even before man embark on writing it down. History is and every changing chain of events and fact that have been spread over time. But how do historians write history. How do they know what really happened at that time. How do they find the correct facts and put them in a book or compare them to the time they are studying. In Edward Hallatt Carr’s book, What is history? He attempts to answer this question, by explaining how historians come by their fact, how they see it as individuals, he compares it to science, the causes, as a process, and as a growing field. Which Carr’s purpose is to expose the correct what to writing and understanding history for one who wants to become a historian.
Carr understands history because he is a historian himself. He is confident in his field of study. He reminds u that when answering the question what is history? We tend to interpret it from where we stand at the present time. Also how our society works effects that question, and to him because he understands this subject the question seems so vast and broad. Because there is no true history, it’s all based on interpretation.
The main points of the book have been stretched out over six chapters. Some chapters more important then the other but none the less had some type of point made in each. In chap...
Thesis: Just as the characters in this novel are taught by only 2 books, doesn’t show that what they are taught is correct, especially in David’s case.
The aim of this book by Bui Diem with David Chanoff is to present the Vietnam War told from a South Vietnamese perspective. The large-scale scope of the work concerns the fighting between North and South Vietnam over which party would run the country and wanting to become an independent state free from the Western powers. Diem's memoir contains in-depth details about his life and politics in Vietnam in 1940-1975. The book serves as a primary source in documenting the events in Vietnam during the war and as an autobiography of Diem's life. The purpose of this book is to give insight of the war through Diem's eyes and how it affected his life.
Typically, a novel contains four basic parts: a beginning, middle, climax, and the end. The beginning sets the tone for the book and introduces the reader to the characters and the setting. The majority of the novel comes from middle where the plot takes place. The plot is what usually captures the reader’s attention and allows the reader to become mentally involved. Next, is the climax of the story. This is the point in the book where everything comes together and the reader’s attention is at the fullest. Finally, there is the end. In the end of a book, the reader is typically left asking no questions, and satisfied with the outcome of the previous events. However, in the novel The Things They Carried the setup of the book is quite different. This book is written in a genre of literature called “metafiction.” “Metafiction” is a term given to fictional story in which the author makes the reader question what is fiction and what is reality. This is very important in the setup of the Tim’s writing because it forces the reader to draw his or her own conclusion about the story. However, this is not one story at all; instead, O’Brien writes the book as if each chapter were its own short story. Although all the chapters have relation to one another, when reading the book, the reader is compelled to keep reading. It is almost as if the reader is listening to a “soldier storyteller” over a long period of time.
Second, the historian must place himself within the existing historical debate on the topic at hand, and state (if not so formulaically as is presented here) what he intends to add to or correct about the existing discussion, how he intends to do that (through examining new sources, asking new questions, or shifting the emphasis of pre-existing explanations), and whether he’s going to leave out some parts of the story. This fulfills the qualities of good history by alerting readers to the author’s bias in comparison with the biases of other schools of scholarship on the topic, and shows that the author is confident enough in his arguments to hold them up to other interpreta...
The study of past events have been a common practice of mankind since the verbal telling of stories by our ancestors. William Cronon, in his article “Why the Past Matters,” asserts that the remembrance of the past “keeps us in place.” Our individual memories and experiences shape how we act in our daily lives. In addition to influencing us at an individual level, our collective history binds us together as a society. Without knowing where we have been or what we have experienced, it is nearly impossible to judge progress or know which courses of action to pursue. The goal of the historian is to analyze and explain past events, of which they rarely have firsthand memory of, and apply the gained knowledge to make connections with current and future events.
In his short article “World History as a Way of Thinking” Eric Lane Martin, “…argue[s] that the most important things the field of world history has to offer the researcher, teacher, student, and general public are the conceptual tools required for understanding complex global processes and problems.” Anyone who follows the evening news or shops at Wal-mart, has encountered the processes and problems Martin speaks of. Our modern society puts pressure on a variety of citizens to grapple with and attempt to understand issues on a scale that moves beyond the local and national. History has long been a tool utilized by scholars, politicians and citizens to help them put current day happenings into context. That context has allowed for a deeper understanding of the present day. In an era when the issues cross national and regional boundaries the need for a different scale of history has become apparent. World history has emerged as a relatively new discipline within academia that is attempting to provide the context for large-scale processes and problems. As the field has grown a variety of authors, some historians, some from other fields, have attempted to write a history of the world. With such a daunting task how can we define success? How can we analyze the history that provides a true global perspective on processes and problems we face? By taking Martin’s two key characteristics of world history, one, it is defined by the kinds of questions it asks and two, it is defined by the problem-solving techniques it uses, we can analyze texts purporting to be world history and access their utility in providing context for the global processes and problems we face today.
A beginning group of historians to take a closer look at is the empiricists. The empiricists have a very strictly factual and logical view on history and how to examine it. They believe that past is both “observable and verifiable” and that through adherence to three strict principles, the past can be represented objectively and accurately. (Green, Troup 3) The three aforementioned principles can be summed up as: meticulously examining historical evidence and verifying the evidence with references, making sure the research is completely impartial and free of biases and prejudices, and using an inductive, or observational, method of reasoning. (Green, Troup 3) The empiricists seek to find universal historical truths through objective research and sticking to the facts.
John Lewis Gaddis, in his book, The Landscape of History, generates a strong argument for the historical method by bringing together the multiple standpoints in viewing history and the sciences. The issue of objective truth in history is addressed throughout Gaddis’s work. In general, historians learn to select the various events that they believe to be valid. Historians must face the fact that there is an “accurate” interpretation of the past ceases to exist because interpretation itself is based on the experience of the historian, in which people cannot observe directly (Gaddis 10). Historians can only view the past in a limited perspective, which generates subjectivity and bias, and claiming a piece of history to be “objective” is simplistic. Seeing the world in a multidimensiona...
...d of detail, causing some of the structure and sequence to be lost. The points he makes are valid, but the reader can lose track of them due to the little sense of organization by category or priority within the chapters.
History and time are considered to be cultural formations since a History cannot be detached from the culture in which it is produced and received. It is through culture that a historical sense is achieved and in fact, each culture experiences History in a different way leading us to the current perception of History as not being one, but many histories depending on the cultural groups involved. Historians have fought throughout the centuries on whether such thing as “objective History” can exist but in the end, even materialist historians will admit that the reality of History is so complicated and contradictory that no single version could possibly represent the truth; consequently different interpretations are inevitable.
Here are some of the main points that I gathered from each chapter of this book:
"I once asked myself, how history was written. I said, "I have to invent it." When I wish as now to tell of critical incidents, persons, and events that have influenced my life and work, the true answer is all of the incidents were critical, all of the people influenced me, everything that happened and that is still happening influences me."
In What is History, Alan Bullock believes that history is an attempt to explain the sequence and connections of events. He believes that "History is to explain why...it is not to explain why they had to follow, but why they did in fact follow." It is believed by Bullock that history is taken apart and is put together by an historian, so that it may yield new evidence, that will teach us a lesson from the past in order to become more aware of the future. This connective account helps us "get inside the skin of this man or group of men."
History is a body of knowledge that has surrounded not only the events of the past but also their consequences. History is concerned with evidence about human beings who have lived in the society. It’s so concerning with how human lives have changed through time. It’s not only the explanation about the distant past but also that contemporary world. History is concerned with people in the society, their interaction and their relationships with their environment. History had an impact on society because interaction between society and its past is an unending one, the interaction is mutual and continuous. The past exists only in the mind and memories of those in the present. Since history is said to be concerning with people in the society, their
Learning about history helps us learn about the humanities own reflection and what’s good or bad about it. This is just like a diary , people and by people I mean historians , just wrote what they saw and what seemed to cause a major change in society and we just happen to be reading it a couple of years later. I believe that historians actually wrote historical truth because it makes sense and it has been scientifically proven