The Postmodern History Reader (Routledge Readers in History) [Paperback]

Keith Jenkins (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 21, 1997 | ISBN-10: 041513904X | ISBN-13: 978-0415139045 | Edition: 1

The Postmodern History Reader is the most comprehensive collection of influential texts on historiography and postmodernism yet compiled. Keith Jenkins expertly selects from the books and journal articles across the whole historiographical range that have been key to the transforming debates.

This unique reader is a clear introduction to the impact of postmodernism on historical debate, allowing easy access to one of the more stimulating and exciting areas of current history. It provides:

* extracts from influential historians, such as Barthes, Joyce, White, Foucault and Baudrillard
* individual introductions to each carefully defined debate
* many thoroughly up-to-date as well as 'classic' pieces
* texts from a range of subdisciplines in history and theory
* arguments both for and against postmodernism
* advice on further reading
* access to key writings which are not normally readily available.

Presented in a format that is both easy to use and challenging, The Postmodern History Reader will serve as an invaluable course text and reference tool for students and postgraduates.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This is an authoritative selection of texts representing fairly all the principal positions in the current debate about the status of historical knowledge 'after modernism'. Keith Jenkins' superb introduction adroitly sorts out the issues and points the way to further profitable discussion for the near future. The collection amply illustrates that the 'discourse of history' has entered a new era.
–Hayden White, University of California

With clarity of purpose and a discerning eye for the apt text, Keith Jenkins has pulled together major postmodernism themes for adventurous historians.
–Joyce Appleby, co-editor of Knowledge and Postmodernism in Historical Perspective

About the Author

Keith Jenkins is Senior Lecturer in History at the Chichester Institute. He is the author of Rethinking History (1991) and On "What is History?" (1995), both from Routledge.

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (August 21, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 041513904X
• ISBN-13: 978-0415139045
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #837,632 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Okay Beginner's Introduction, April 11, 2002

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Nessander - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Postmodern History Reader (Routledge Readers in History) (Paperback)

Keith Jenkins has done a reasonable, but not excellent, job in collecting this series of essays, selections, and exchanges on the effect that postmodern thought is (not) having on the academic field of history. Along with a host of excerpts from important thinkers such as Lyotard, Baudrillard, Foucault and the like, he includes academic spats taken from the pages of the journals "Past and Present" and "History and Theory". These are more amusing (or depressing) than informative, in that they merely show how little thought is actually going on in the field of history.

Jenkins is himself pretty aware of this, however. His own written contributions to the book almost make it worthwhile. He comments on the exchanges in the academic journals and notes their unsatisfactory nature, and he also provides a quite good introduction in which he details the main problematic and the key issues being (not being?) discussed in history departments.

Despite Jenkins' own clarity in his writing and occasional commentary, I cannot wholeheartedly recommend the book, since it is clearly written for beginners who will very quickly outgrow it, and it seems to me that those beginners could begin more fruitfully elsewhere - some other introduction to postmodern/post-structuralist thought. History is not really (yet - will it ever be?) the field where cutting edge thinking is going on in this regard. It is characterized more by a reactionary attitude, or a "ueberwintern" strategy -- hoping postmodernism and its theories will just go away and leave good ole empiricism alone. There are precious few exceptions to this general rule (Jenkins himself being one, of course).

Also, there are some major omissions (in my opinion), including that of Michel de Certeau, whose influence on historiography and theory in general will prove enormous.