The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History

by Robert C. Williams

Overview

Now in its fifth edition, The Historian’s Toolbox is designed to help students become skilled in the intellectual process and craft of history, offering an overview of the field and techniques for reading and writing about history.

The fifth edition expands the selection of tools available to students entering the workshop of history. These include new chapters on digital history, indigenous peoples, and gender history and new sections on the Voynich manuscript, LGBTQ+ history, slavery, and a historian who survived the war in Ukraine. The book has been fully updated to address the possibilities and limits of computerized approaches to doing history, with careful attention paid to the benefits and controversies of artificial intelligence, chatbots, and the Internet. It demonstrates the continuing relevance of history in a cacophonous world of misinformation and censorship, emphasizing critical thinking, facts, and evidence as valuable means of understanding the past and shaping the future.

Engaging and accessible, this volume is ideal for undergraduate courses in historiography and historical methods.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032755977
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	10/03/2024
Edition description:	5th ed.
Pages:	244
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Robert C. Williams is Vail Professor of History Emeritus at Davidson College, where he was Dean of Faculty from 1986 to 1998. He is a Russian historian and the author of eighteen books and numerous articles. He received his B.A. from Wesleyan University and has taught at Bates, Davidson, and Williams Colleges and at Washington University in St. Louis.

Table of Contents

Part 1: The Craft of History  1. The Past  2. Story  3. History  4. Metahistory  5. Antihistory  6. The Present  7. The Future  Part 2: The Tools of History  8. Doing History: An Overview  9. Sources and Evidence  10. Credit and Acknowledgment  11. Narrative and Explanation  12. Interpretation  13. Speculation  Part 3: The Relevance of History  14. Everyday History  15. Oral History  16. Material Culture  17. Public History  18. Event Analysis  19. Digital History  20. Gender History  21. Indigenous Peoples  22. Epilogue: The End of History?

Editorial Reviews

"The Historian's Toolbox is a quintessential guide that needs to be on the desk of every undergraduate student of history. The fourth edition incorporates new debates and tools for Digital Humanities."

Dr. Anjana Singh, Asst. Professor in Early Modern History, Department of History; University of Groningen, The Netherlands

"The Historian's Toolbox is a quintessential guide that needs to be on the desk of every undergraduate student of history. The fourth edition incorporates new debates and tools for Digital Humanities."

Dr. Anjana Singh, Asst. Professor in Early Modern History, Department of History; University of Groningen, The Netherlands

From the Publisher