Includes Index

1. The historian's task
2. Vico and the meaning of historical origins
3. Historical writing and moral psychology
4. The tasks of romantic history
5. Historicism, the historian's craft, and the new century
6. The approach of social science
7. Historical time and historical structures
8. Marxism and "history from below"
9. History from within: trauma and memory
10. Postmodernism and "the linguistic turn"
11. History and sexual identity
12. Anthropological description and objects of history
13. The social history of material objects.

Guides readers through European and North American developments in history-writing since the eighteenth century. Starting with Enlightenment history and moving through subjects such as moral history, national history, the emergence of history as a profession, and the impact of scientific principles on history, he then looks at some of the most important developments in twentieth-century historiography such as social history, traumatic memory, postcolonialism, gender history, postmodernism, and the history of material objects. This is the only book that brings together historiographical writing from anthropology, literary theory, philosophy, psychology, and sociology – as well as history. Each of the thirteen thematic sections begins with a clear introduction that familiarizes readers with the topics and articles, setting them in their wider contexts. They explain what historiography is, how historians’ perspectives and sources determine the kinds of questions they ask, and discuss how social and ideological developments have shaped historical writing over the past three centuries."