History in Practice

This study by one of the liveliest and most thought-provoking historians has a refreshing transparency and ground-breaking determination to demystify what fellow practitioners do. In looking at history as an academic discipline and engaging the reader with the use of historical ideas in the wider world, this book takes into account recent world events such as the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York and the war in Iraq. Also included is a new chapter on the relationships between religious, ethnic and political identities, the history of international diplomacy and how the world map gets reconfigured. The study of history has changed dramatically in recent decades. The swiftness and scale of the shift has been well documented, but the precise nature of the implications of it remain hotly contested and are explored in this insightful analysis. Ludmilla Jordanova holds a Chair in History at King's College London. She was previously Director of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Downing College. This study by one of the liveliest and most thought-provoking historians has a refreshing transparency and ground-breaking determination to demystify what fellow practitioners do. In looking at history as an academic discipline and engaging the reader with the use of historical ideas in the wider world, this book takes into account recent world events such as the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York and the war in Iraq. Also included is a new chapter on the relationships between religious, ethnic and political identities, the history of international diplomacy and how the world map gets reconfigured. The study of history has changed dramatically in recent decades. The swiftness and scale of the shift has been well documented, but the precise nature of the implications of it remain hotly contested and are explored in this insightful analysis. "Brilliant...abounds with penetrating yet down-to-earth insights about the practice of academic history. One of the last half-century's most insightful, level-headed, and humane reflections on the practice of history and its cultural significance...(to be) welcomed by professional historians...also accessible to general readers and undergraduates."History Journal "Jordanova is brilliant in exposition...makes a fine case for the inescapability of the past and the absolute essentiality of studying it."English Historical Review "Brilliant...abounds with penetrating yet down-to-earth insights about the practice of academic history. One of the last half-century's most insightful, level-headed, and humane reflections on the practice of history and its cultural significance...(to be) welcomed by professional historians...also accessible to general readers and undergraduates."History Journal "Jordanova succeeds admirably in her aim to place the practice of history in a wider disciplinary context. Not only is she alive to the constructed nature of subject boundaries and their porosity, but also to the relatively recent date of their institutionalisation." Reviews in History "A major, deeply reflective work upon the nature of studying and writing history....No other author has treated the subject in the same way."Ronald Hutton, University of Bristol "Achieves what I had thought increasingly impossible in this congested field: it says something fresh, stimulating, and thought provoking. It is, to my mind, a very significant contribution to current debates about the nature of history in offering an account which is simultaneousl

Ludmilla Jordanova holds a Chair in History at King's College London. She was previously Director of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Downing College.