A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century (Hardcover)

by John Burrow (Author)
Key Phrases: philosophic history, humanist history, chivalric history, French Revolution, Middle Ages, The Twentieth Century (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
History is usually classified as a social science, but Burrow eloquently demonstrates that the writing of history is an art. And since historians engage in an art form, they are required to use rigor, discipline, and, especially, analytical skill. It is that skill that separates Herodotus and Thucydides from earlier Egyptian and Mesopotamian scribes, whom Burrow classifies as record keepers rather than historians. As he examines the historical writings of Livy, Bede, McCaulay, and such twentieth-century historians as Huizinga and Bloch, it is fascinating to see the evolution of various historiographic trends. Some view history as a working out of a divine plan. Others are militant secularists with a contempt for the great man theory of development. What seems to unite all great historians is a sincere, if inevitably biased, effort to find deeper meanings that transcend particular events and help us better understand how individuals function as social actors. While this book will be especially valuable to historians, general readers can also learn much from Burrow’s superbly written analyses of these great histories and those who wrote them. --Jay Freeman

Review
“Burrow marshals a lifetime of knowledge and guides the reader effortlessly across the ages.”
—Time

“A fascinating compendium.”
—The New Yorker

"A triumph. . . . Reminds us of how often the narratives of the great historians resemble works of literature and of how important a secure grasp of historical fact can be to the progress of culture and the fate of nations."
—The Wall Street Journal

“Absorbingly informative. . . . An exemplar of how history should be written. Witty, scholarly and, above all, fair.”
—The Times (London)


From the Trade Paperback edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 544 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (April 8, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375413111
• ISBN-13: 978-0375413117
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #137,107 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A most enjoyable survey, April 8, 2008

By	Ralph Blumenau (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This splendid book gives us the flavour of Western historians from the Ancient Greeks to the Twentieth Century. Burrow does not neglect the Philosophy of History, but that is not his main concern: rather does he bring out the personality of the historians through their writings and how their books have been shaped by their own times and their own experiences. Plentiful quotations from their works illustrate the book; they are beautifully chosen, and a pleasure to read in themselves.

Burrow is very good on tracing the influence of the historians of Greece and Rome on the historians of much later centuries - of Tacitus on Gibbon, to give just one example. About a third of the book is rightly devoted to Antiquity. We are reminded how deservedly Antiquity is regarded, in this field also, as one of the cradles of European thought, and how extraordinarily relevant the experiences of the Ancient World are to our own. This was known among the educated classes in the days when Herodotus and Thucydides, Livy and Tacitus were a staple of education: they found these classics an inexhaustible fund of enlightenment and understanding of political processes, providing models as well as warnings

Certainly there is a sad falling off after the classical period. The early Christian historians abandoned the aim of being impartial, relentlessly promoted orthodox Christianity and implacably blackened the unorthodox. Where historians like Eusebius and Bede did have a philosophy to guide them, they traced what they saw as God's plan in history; but a lesser man, like the 6th century Bishop Gregory of Tours, to whom Burrow devotes an amusing chapter (he calls him `Trollope with bloodshed'), seems to show, in his mistitled History of the Franks, nothing at all of what we could recognize as philosophical reflections - though with or without such reflections, we can of course learn much about the ways of life and preoccupations that he depicts.

The same is broadly true of the medieval annals and chronicles to which Burrow devotes a solid chunk of his book. In Froissart's Chronicles we learn much about the code of chivalry between knights (though the code does not apply to the treatment of commoners). Burrow extracts some vivid or entertaining material from them, and he is often a witty and entertaining commentator himself. He remarks that we should not expect narrative or thematic connections in annals: `we should think instead of a newspaper whose time scale is the year, not the day. We are ourselves unperturbed by the most diverse news stories appearing in juxtaposition, ...' The scurrilous 13th century chronicler Matthew Paris reminds Burrow `of a modern tabloid editor: disrespectful, populist, xenophobic, and anti-intellectual', and an attempt to bowdlerize him would be `like trying to de-vein Gorgonzola'.

However, Renaissance historians, like Bruni, Machiavelli and Guiccardini, modelled themselves once again on the histories of ancient Rome and Greece. Like them, they were fine stylists and sometimes invented speeches; looked for lessons that history could teach; saw patterns of order degenerating into disorder until order was reestablished; lamented the decline of the republican virtues and the decline of freedom; were cynical (realistic?) about how rulers maintain themselves in power; and were interested in the intricate relationships between neighbouring and competing states.

During the Renaissance also we first find an interest in Antiquarianism, research not only into the sources of Roman Law, but also into the Customary Law of the `barbarians' which Roman Law replaced or absorbed. The discovery of these more ancient sources and of the `immemorial rights' of subjects will play a part in the struggle against absolutism in the 16th century France and 17th century England, and, in the hands of William Stubbs in the 19th century, in the progression of English liberties down to his own time.

As the book moves into the discussions of historians in the 17th and 18th century, it becomes slightly heavier going and is not lit up as often by shafts of Burrow's wit, though one of these historians, Edward Gibbon, compensates for this with his own, thankfully mined by Burrow.

For the 19th century we have two superlative sections contrasting Macaulay and Carlyle - all they have in common is that they both `stand at the apex of a long movement, before austere professionalism spoiled the game, to render history for the reader in its full sensuous and emotional immediacy and circumstantiality'.

These sections are followed by one brilliantly contrasting 19th century French historians, notably Michelet and Taine, showing how the French Revolution continued to be subject to different and passionate interpretations.

Another section also deals beautifully with contrasts, this time between the sober way in which Bernal Diaz describes the conquest of Mexico in which he had himself taken part and the more Gibbonesque version of the subject by W.H.Prescott in the mid-19th century. Another American historian whom Burrow describes with infectious sympathy is Francis Parkman, the evocative 19th century chronicler of the American Indians' 17th century encounters with the French (who sometimes went native) and the British (whose victory over the French was a disaster for the Indians).

Burrow's last two chapters deal with the professionalization of history: its introduction into the universities as independent faculties; its consequent bureaucratization; its aim in the late 19th century, under German influence, to be like a science; and, in the 20th century, in its conscious obedience to rival philosophies of history and the influence that other disciplines exert on it. It became more technical and more specialized. Analysis of structure became more fashionable than narrative. There was an explosion in the number of historians and in the areas of life that are of interest to them. These chapters are worthy rather than inspiring - possibly Burrow himself is less inspired by that kind of history: he treats no individual work of history with the expansiveness which he had bestowed on earlier works.

I hope the success of this book will lead to a reprint of the author's book on Victorian historians.

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A history of Histories, April 8, 2008

By	Stephen Balbach (Ashton, MD United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

John W. Burrow is a professor of that somewhat orphaned discipline "history of ideas", or intellectual history. Burrow approaches 'A History of Histories' as an intellectual historian, and not a critic. That means you won't find critiques regarding historical accuracy. Instead Burrow emphasizes the general character of the historians achievement, relying on the work of specialized scholars and biographers: the biography lists many excellent "secondary" sources a few of which Burrow has relied heavily on.

Burrows is, in a sense, a popularizer of some the most important histories, his goal being to "give a sense of the experience of reading these histories and what may be enjoyable about them"; he assumes that you have not read or even heard of the works. Such an approach, which mixes interpretation and summary, allows Burrow to cover a great number of works across time - from Herodotus to the late 20th century - but at some cost: a reader may feel they understand the significance of a work, but a connected developing narrative seems unclear; and while there are many block quotes (in particular with the earlier authors), often one yearns for more of a taste of the work.

How can one create a narrative of a "history of histories"? Burrow examines the ideas of the past, and how today we stand in relation to those ideas as expressed in history books. These themes include the emerging conception of a distinct European identity contrasted with Asia; ideas of republican virtue in early Rome, supposedly corrupted by conquest and vice; the Bible's narrative of transgression, punishment and redemption; the idea of an early Germanic state of "freedom" as the ultimate basis for modern constitutional democracy; 19th century ideas of nationalism; 20th century divergences into many genres, none of which dominate.

At its best, 'A History of Histories' conveys the imaginative energies of some of the worlds most famous and important historians. In the end books such as this really only matter if they send us off -- for the first or 10th time -- to read Gibbon's account of a Fall, Xenophon's travels through the desert or Parkman's epic of the New World. My copy is marked up with new histories to (re)discover.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly monumental work, June 9, 2008

By	Kurt A. Johnson (Marseilles, Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I have always been a history nut, reading history after history throughout my life. And one cannot read these histories without realizing that there is a difference between the way the historians viewed their subjects, and how they went about recording history. In this fascinating book, author and noted historian, John Burrow, examines the historians, putting them within their historic framework, and showing how they viewed their subjects.

As each historian is unveiled - Herodotus, Thucydides, Zenophon, and on and on - you get an understanding of what the historian was saying and how he understood his subject. Even more, you get to see how the understanding of "history" has changed throughout the unfolding of Western society.

Overall, I found this to be a thoroughly absorbing book. I really enjoy history, and now I see how a "history" is part of history, with a context to it. If you enjoy reading non-modern histories, you really should read this book. I does a great job of taking you behind the words, to what the author was truly saying and why. I think that this is a truly monumental work, one that is sure to please any history buff.