From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods [Paperback]

Martha C. Howell (Author), Walter Prevenier (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 207 pages
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr (April 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801485606
• ISBN-13: 978-0801485602
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,867 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #14 in Books > History > Historical Study > Historiography

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63 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very helpful introduction, December 25, 2005

By 

Dr. Lee D. Carlson (Baltimore, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (Paperback)

History used to be a subject that one could view as somewhat ancillary, as an interesting subject but one that was not really needed to function in the modern world. One could dispense with studying history and still maintain a proper perspective of world events. Any inaccuracies in the reporting of world events were the responsibility of reporters, and historians were viewed in general as occupiers of an ivory tower. They were held to be trustworthy because not much weight was assigned to their scholarly activities.

In general, this attitude about history and historians is now considered to be a mistake. Because of some very volatile and dangerous events in the early twenty-first century, the study of history should be viewed now as one of the most important, if not the most important scholarly activity. One can easily observe the enormous weight that is placed on events of the past, due in part to the ideological agendas that are deeply embedded in contemporary politics. And some historians have chosen to use historical analysis to justify a political agenda, or have acted as sycophants for the institutions that host them. It would be fair to say that some historians are now viewed with extreme skepticism, and many are therefore looking into the historical record and seeking answers on their own. These historical auto-didactics are hungry for tools of analysis in which to study and interpret past events.

This short book gives an introduction to these tools, and any reader, whether of the afore-mentioned type or not, will gain a lot from its perusal. It gives much insight into how historians view and find sources, and is primarily written for non-experts (such as this reviewer) in historical analysis. Philosophers and economists will also discover how the study of history also intersects to a large degree with their own fields.

There is a wealth of information in the book, and many questions are answered as well as raised. Some of these include:

1. What is the nature of historical interpretation? Can historians put themselves in a position where an historical source can be read without giving attention to the historical context that give it meaning?
2. How can an historical source be characterized?
3. Are historians ethically responsible for the content of their works, and if so, to what degree?
4. Is there any value in oral records for historical analysis? In interviewing?
5. What impact has information technology had on historical analysis?
6. How are archives useful for the historian, and does a given archive, taken to be reliable, expand or shrink with time?
7. Will the advent of software to analyze historical texts eventually result in the automation of historical analysis?
8. How do historians assess the accuracy or authenticity of sources?
9. Does the interpretation of an historical document always involve the determination of its intended meaning?
10. Should "firsthand" reports of events always be taken as true?
11. How do historians compare different sources relating to the same historical event?
12. The authors refer to `reasoning by interpolation' or `by analogy'. What exactly is the nature of this kind of reasoning?
13. When can a historian claim that his analysis is correct? Is there a way of quantifying the point at which enough evidence has been collected?
14. Can participants in events claim any special insight into these events over and above what can be obtained by an observer (an historian) who is not, or has not, participated in these events?
15. Can historians view events and documents from an apodictic point of view, i.e. free from bias and any implicit assumptions?
16. Should historians focus on what people did in the past rather than what they thought or felt?
17. Should historians concentrate on deducing the motives of the people in history from their visible actions?
18. The authors point to the use of fields such as psychology to study the "feelings in history." Could the relatively new field of cognitive neuroscience be used to do the same, or even more generally to study the motives, decisions, and mental limitations of people in history? One could view this use as a kind of "historical neurocriticism" and its use could possibly shed considerable light on how people, through their cultures, construct meanings of their experiences and make history.
19. The authors refer to human life as being "too complex" to be analyzed with historical models. What notion of complexity is being used here, and given current methods for dealing with complexity in model-building, would these be of any assistance in the study of history, especially those that attempt to understand to what extent events are caused by human actions?
20. Should historians focus more on studies of "popular culture" and not on "learned culture", i.e. should they analyze historical events in terms of what has recently been called "people's history?"
21. What is the difference between a `linear' theory of history and a `cyclical theory', and is the former always more optimistic than the latter?
22. Can technological innovations and development be used as a reference of time for historical change, i.e. as a kind of clock or calendar in which historians are to delineate events? Such a calendar would not necessarily be a linear ordering of events like the ones that are currently used. In periods of rapid technological development, time will be more compressed than in periods of slow technological development. History could thus be viewed as moving more quickly in the former than in the latter.

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book every graduate student and historian should have., September 14, 2005

By 

Michael J. Sopher "Soph" (Green, Ohio) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (Paperback)

Finding the right sources for a book, article, paper, or project is much more difficult than it seems. Every subject generally has a large list of material available for use. But in order to generate a significant contribution to this field, historians need to sort out the reliable sources that fit their topic. From Reliable Sources helps this process by producing a "guideline" to finding the best material and how it can be put to use. This book is a useful guide to the various techniques professional historians have devised for analyzing sources. It gets across the point of finding the best sources in order to produce quality historical scholarship.
The critical analysis of a source is the first step to this process. What follows is whether or not the historian believes that the source is reliable. An important message conveyed by the authors is that no source is perfectly reliable. This leads to the limitations faced by historians today, such as change and causality, and how they deal with them. Its significance to historical writing is vital because historians today use different methodologies than their predecessors. Historiography is a daily changing profession where scholars and historians continually struggle with finding the right sources.

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid introductory reference, November 29, 2006

By 

Michael J. Mendenhall "www.investigativehisto... (Monterey, California USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods (Paperback)

The trouble with studying history is that it is exceedingly boring in many respects. Unless you are a graduate student of history or just a real history buff, you probably have better ways to spend your time. I like this book a lot, and I only say that because this book is a good, solid introduction to the issue of sources. Oh my goodness, sources. How many biased books are there on every imaginable subject that come to faulty conclusions based on an obvious lack of in-depth research? Anyone can "research" a subject by cherry picking sources and then drawing a conclusion based on someone else's research which is often a compilation of opinions. No one will admit to doing this, but it happens frequently.

What I particularly like about this book is that it approaches history from the standpoint of evaluating sources critically. Certainly history is just a compilation of facts, but how reliable are those facts? No one alive today knew George Washington personally, so how do we really know anything about him? That depends on the nature of the source. We have diaries of first hand accounts. There are letters that he wrote. We know what he looks like based on portraits painted of him. We also know what other people said about him. The problem is that we have to interpret all that information. The key is compiling and evaluating sources. This book addresses many different areas of that and gives various methods for evaluating the credibility of a source. There is a certain amount of critical thinking that goes into such an evaluation and for many people a source is only as credible as the honesty of the person from whom it originated. This usually involves personal attacks and questions about a person's character. This book goes beyond that into other methods of corroborating evidence.

I keep this in my personal library next to other standard books on the subject of researching and writing about history. This book is not about writing history as much as it is an introductory book on researching and evaluating sources. The overall tone of the book is definitely college level. It is probably a bit much for undergraduate history students except for history majors who plan to do a lot of history research. It is definitely suitable for graduate students.

I occasionally refer back to section II (Technical Analysis of Sources) and Section III (Historical Interpretation: The Traditional Basics). Both sections combined are contained in pages 43 through 87 which is not a whole lot of reading. Section II covers a broad range of topics including "Source Criticism: The Great Tradition." I particularly like that part, and I refer back to it on occasion. This subsection covers the analysis of a document from whether the document is an original or a copy down to "The Trustworthiness of the Observer."

Overall, this is an excellent book for the history student, the historian and the history buff. I plan to keep it for the long term for occasional reference whenever I need to brush up on the basics of source criticism and document analysis.