Book 15 - E.H.Carr "What Is History?"

[jazzy_dave]

E.H.Carr "What Is History?" (Penguin History)







Going back to re-read old university textbooks for fun must be a sign of incipient nostalgia for the lost days of youth - that or masochism. I didn’t get a nostalgic buzz (possibly as I was young and foolish enough to think I could get away by essentially skimming it) for my Open University courses in history but reading it now with age and experience has made it more rewarding.


Carr’s initial question is the springboard for six essays, transcribed from a series of lectures. It’s a musing on what history is and the role it has in our society – how it actually fits neatly in with sciences, how objective a historian can be and how history tells us as much about the time it’s written in as it does about the time itself. It’s actually aged very well, being prescient on a number of issues and forcefully making a point of how history should be a positive force. Still, one thing is concerning – if Carr’s thesis that a nation in decline harks back to golden ages and nostalgia and turns inward on itself then the UK is in a ‘sick’ state indeed.

A fascinating starting point for anyone looking at history and historiography.