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Making History: How Great Historians Interpret the Past
History is not truth. While it forms the backbone of our knowledge about the world, history is nevertheless only a version of events. History is shaped by the interpretations and perspectives of the individual historians who record it. Consider:
Sallust, writing his dark history of Rome to rail against the political corruption he saw consuming the empire—while artfully concealing his own role in it;
John Foxe, in his Book of Martyrs, writing about church history to discredit the Catholics and legitimize the reign of Elizabeth I;
David Hume, penning his massive History of England with the deliberate goal of creating a potboiler that will earn him a fortune.
What, then, is the motive and the vision of the historian? How do historians create their histories? And what role does the historian's viewpoint and method play in what we accept as truth?
These questions underlie a history lesson of the most revealing kind.
In Making History: How Great Historians Interpret the Past, award-winning scholar Allen C. Guelzo of Gettysburg College takes you inside the minds of our greatest historians. Over 24 intriguing lectures, he challenges you to explore the idea of written history as it has shaped humanity's story over 2,000 years. Told through enthralling historical anecdotes, the course travels deep into mankind's fundamental desire to record and understand the world, to shed new light on the events and experiences of yesterday, and to use the past as a window onto the present and the future.
History: The Art of Discovery
"History is more than merely a pile-up of facts or a chronicle of the past," notes Dr. Guelzo. "It is an art—and a very complicated one at that. And like the others arts, it has techniques and perspectives, some of them old and long-since retired, some of them in violent conflict with each other."
The actors in this art of discovery are the great historians themselves, from the ancient Greeks to our own time. You look through the eyes of our civilization's greatest historical minds to ponder why they conceived and wrote history the way they did.
In key sections, you explore the seminal thinking of these men:
Herodotus, considered by many the first history writer, who replaced the epic imagination of Homer with istorieis, or inquiry
Livy, the author of a 142-volume didactic history of Rome that spanned three continents and seven centuries
David Hume, who framed English history with an evolutionary vision of economic, political, and intellectual freedom
Edward Gibbon, whose monumental Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire forged a complex picture of epic collapse and decay
Beneath the Surface of Written History
With Professor Guelzo's penetrating perspective, you examine the processes that create accepted views of historical events. As you take apart the elements of history writing, you discover how the great stories of the past were chosen and how they were interpreted.
In considering the key choices the historian makes, you uncover the ways in which understanding how history is written is crucial to understanding historical events themselves. You also explore how the version of history you accept reveals much about you as an individual and as a member of a community.
The journey rewards you with an unforgettable insight into our human heritage and the chance to look with discerning eyes at human events in their deeper meanings. Anyone with an interest in history, philosophy, or intellectual history will find these lectures a far-reaching meditation on the evolution of historical thought.
"Constructing" the Past
As a core feature of Making History, you explore the major interpretive concepts or historical genres that form the backbone of Western history writing. These are among the many fundamental genres you examine:
Celebration: History writing as the remembrance or glorification of great deeds or events, providing a cultural identity for a given people
Declension: An interpretive model of decline, charting the deterioration of political, social, and moral systems
Continuity: The understanding or justification of present events as they conform to patterns of the past
Apocalyptic: A view of human events as moving toward an ultimate, devastating rupture with the past, leading to a new order
You follow these core genres through time and learn how they interact with other ways of viewing history, including history as science, as economics, as progress, as class struggle, and as culture. You also chart the ways these themes intersect and oppose each other across the centuries, as they illuminate the origins of our contemporary thinking.
In the Trenches with Great Minds
Professor Guelzo's storytelling enriches the background of the writing. In the Greek world, you travel with Xenophon and Thucydides through their own dramatic military exploits, as they develop models of history writing that still carry ...
Sallust, writing his dark history of Rome to rail against the political corruption he saw consuming the empire—while artfully concealing his own role in it;
John Foxe, in his Book of Martyrs, writing about church history to discredit the Catholics and legitimize the reign of Elizabeth I;
David Hume, penning his massive History of England with the deliberate goal of creating a potboiler that will earn him a fortune.
What, then, is the motive and the vision of the historian? How do historians create their histories? And what role does the historian's viewpoint and method play in what we accept as truth?
These questions underlie a history lesson of the most revealing kind.
In Making History: How Great Historians Interpret the Past, award-winning scholar Allen C. Guelzo of Gettysburg College takes you inside the minds of our greatest historians. Over 24 intriguing lectures, he challenges you to explore the idea of written history as it has shaped humanity's story over 2,000 years. Told through enthralling historical anecdotes, the course travels deep into mankind's fundamental desire to record and understand the world, to shed new light on the events and experiences of yesterday, and to use the past as a window onto the present and the future.
History: The Art of Discovery
"History is more than merely a pile-up of facts or a chronicle of the past," notes Dr. Guelzo. "It is an art—and a very complicated one at that. And like the others arts, it has techniques and perspectives, some of them old and long-since retired, some of them in violent conflict with each other."
The actors in this art of discovery are the great historians themselves, from the ancient Greeks to our own time. You look through the eyes of our civilization's greatest historical minds to ponder why they conceived and wrote history the way they did.
In key sections, you explore the seminal thinking of these men:
Herodotus, considered by many the first history writer, who replaced the epic imagination of Homer with istorieis, or inquiry
Livy, the author of a 142-volume didactic history of Rome that spanned three continents and seven centuries
David Hume, who framed English history with an evolutionary vision of economic, political, and intellectual freedom
Edward Gibbon, whose monumental Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire forged a complex picture of epic collapse and decay
Beneath the Surface of Written History
With Professor Guelzo's penetrating perspective, you examine the processes that create accepted views of historical events. As you take apart the elements of history writing, you discover how the great stories of the past were chosen and how they were interpreted.
In considering the key choices the historian makes, you uncover the ways in which understanding how history is written is crucial to understanding historical events themselves. You also explore how the version of history you accept reveals much about you as an individual and as a member of a community.
The journey rewards you with an unforgettable insight into our human heritage and the chance to look with discerning eyes at human events in their deeper meanings. Anyone with an interest in history, philosophy, or intellectual history will find these lectures a far-reaching meditation on the evolution of historical thought.
"Constructing" the Past
As a core feature of Making History, you explore the major interpretive concepts or historical genres that form the backbone of Western history writing. These are among the many fundamental genres you examine:
Celebration: History writing as the remembrance or glorification of great deeds or events, providing a cultural identity for a given people
Declension: An interpretive model of decline, charting the deterioration of political, social, and moral systems
Continuity: The understanding or justification of present events as they conform to patterns of the past
Apocalyptic: A view of human events as moving toward an ultimate, devastating rupture with the past, leading to a new order
You follow these core genres through time and learn how they interact with other ways of viewing history, including history as science, as economics, as progress, as class struggle, and as culture. You also chart the ways these themes intersect and oppose each other across the centuries, as they illuminate the origins of our contemporary thinking.
In the Trenches with Great Minds
Professor Guelzo's storytelling enriches the background of the writing. In the Greek world, you travel with Xenophon and Thucydides through their own dramatic military exploits, as they develop models of history writing that still carry ...
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First published January 1, 2008
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About the author
Allen C. Guelzo
58 books276 followersAllen Carl Guelzo (born 1953) is the Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, where he serves as Director of the Civil War Era Studies Program.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 10, 2024
This 24 lecture course by Allen Guelzo is the third Great Course that I have completed by Professor Guelzo. I have also completed his courses on "The American Revolution" and "The American Mind". He also co-taught another lecture series that I finished on "The History of the United States" in which he taught the first section, up until the start of the Civil War. I would rate this lecture series as my favorite course that I have finished from Professor Guelzo so far, with "The American Mind" second and "The History of the United States" third, and "The American Revolution" the only course that I wasn't completely satisfied in.
This lecture series focuses on the history of people writing history. It begins in the ancient past with a brief overview of how history has been used to tell the tale of civilizations. Then Professor Guelzo moves on to Greece and Rome, giving six lectures to the Greeks and Romans, showing how Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus differed from each other and advanced the method of historical inquiry. There are a few lectures that cover the time period of the Christian Middle Ages, covering Saint Augustine, as well as Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth. There are a few lectures on how the Reformers saw history, such as Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" and John Knox's "History of the Reformation in Scotland". There are a few lectures on Enlightenment history, and then the Romantic response covers a few more lectures, such as Hegel's writings. Then there is a look at Marx's interpretation of history, as well as how culture impacts history, before finally concluding with a few lectures on American history writing.
The course really was of great interest to me. Professor Guelzo is easy to understand and he has no distracting speech patterns. I probably am more interested in this topic than most people, as I am a graduate student in history. However, I think that the study of how historians have written history would appeal to anyone with an interest in the field of history, but also how truth in passed down and recorded, as well as who are the guardians of these truths as well.
This lecture series focuses on the history of people writing history. It begins in the ancient past with a brief overview of how history has been used to tell the tale of civilizations. Then Professor Guelzo moves on to Greece and Rome, giving six lectures to the Greeks and Romans, showing how Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus differed from each other and advanced the method of historical inquiry. There are a few lectures that cover the time period of the Christian Middle Ages, covering Saint Augustine, as well as Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth. There are a few lectures on how the Reformers saw history, such as Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" and John Knox's "History of the Reformation in Scotland". There are a few lectures on Enlightenment history, and then the Romantic response covers a few more lectures, such as Hegel's writings. Then there is a look at Marx's interpretation of history, as well as how culture impacts history, before finally concluding with a few lectures on American history writing.
The course really was of great interest to me. Professor Guelzo is easy to understand and he has no distracting speech patterns. I probably am more interested in this topic than most people, as I am a graduate student in history. However, I think that the study of how historians have written history would appeal to anyone with an interest in the field of history, but also how truth in passed down and recorded, as well as who are the guardians of these truths as well.
November 7, 2020
An interesting overview of how written history (defined as a narrative story of something that happened and has left measurable evidence of its existence) has evolved from the Greeks through the Americans. I learned a lot about concepts of what history is, what it is for, and the primary turning points in how that evolved.
This series of lectures focuses on the way writers of history decide what to write about, choose the details to include, and set the tone of the narrative they write. It is focused on the broad interpretation they choose -- celebratory, focusing on decline, even consciously inductive and scientific -- and explains the facts they choose as a result of that approach. It is very good at telling that part of the story, and I learned a lot about how the purpose of history and the narrative approach has changed over time. I also put content to the role of famous historians and philosophers that I knew by name but didn't know much, in some cases, about what they actually wrote.
This is not a series of lectures for someone who wants to understand techniques of discovering history or the relative value of primary and secondary sources. The lectures cover history more as an aspect of and a contribution to evolving western culture. I enjoyed it, but it is only one perspective on how history has evolved.
I have long enjoyed the "Great Courses" by The Teaching Company for two decades. They pick wonderful professors who know and love their topics. I once picked up a Teaching Company lecture series on The City in a thrift store (back when the lectures were on cassette tapes) -- and listened to it -- just because I think they don't do a bad course. This also was a good course on material that I had not known, and I was impressed by the well-crafted set of lectures. I had hoped for more attention to research and selection techniques, but I still learned a lot that I didn't know I would be interested in.
This series of lectures focuses on the way writers of history decide what to write about, choose the details to include, and set the tone of the narrative they write. It is focused on the broad interpretation they choose -- celebratory, focusing on decline, even consciously inductive and scientific -- and explains the facts they choose as a result of that approach. It is very good at telling that part of the story, and I learned a lot about how the purpose of history and the narrative approach has changed over time. I also put content to the role of famous historians and philosophers that I knew by name but didn't know much, in some cases, about what they actually wrote.
This is not a series of lectures for someone who wants to understand techniques of discovering history or the relative value of primary and secondary sources. The lectures cover history more as an aspect of and a contribution to evolving western culture. I enjoyed it, but it is only one perspective on how history has evolved.
I have long enjoyed the "Great Courses" by The Teaching Company for two decades. They pick wonderful professors who know and love their topics. I once picked up a Teaching Company lecture series on The City in a thrift store (back when the lectures were on cassette tapes) -- and listened to it -- just because I think they don't do a bad course. This also was a good course on material that I had not known, and I was impressed by the well-crafted set of lectures. I had hoped for more attention to research and selection techniques, but I still learned a lot that I didn't know I would be interested in.
October 26, 2022
1. History as the Second Question
2. Homer and Herodotus
You probe the pivotal transition between epic storytelling, the literary or religious interpretation of political events, and written history. Herodotus, in his account of the Persian Wars, breaks new ground, rejecting the causal power of the gods and the right to describe the past without evidence.
3. Marching with Xenophon
Leading from Herodotus's conception of history as celebration, Xenophon writes of dazzling military exploits he personally lived. Thucydides' firsthand account of the Peloponnesian War brings a starkly different cast of questioning and futility.
It is the first instinct of tyrants to take away, or to rewrite, a conquered peoples’ history because it takes away any means of comparing their present state of oppression with any happier days of freedom and independence.
4. The Unhappy Thucydides
Here you look deeply into the vision of Thucydides—arguably the beginning of true history writing. Thucydides asks uncomfortable questions and draws equally uncomfortable conclusions about chance, free will, human nature, and the fixtures of character that rule civilizations.
Study of human nature.
5. Men of Mixed Motives—Polybius and Sallust
The personal character of the historian comes dramatically into play. Polybius, the Greek, living in luxurious exile in Rome, becomes an apologist for Roman conquest. Sallust, the Roman, writes to condemn the moral degeneracy of Rome—while shielding his own complicity.
6. The Grandeur That Was Livy
Here you contemplate the monumental achievements of Titus Livius. In his universal history of "the world that was Rome," grounded in centuries of Roman annals, Livy dramatically extends both the timeframe of history and its geographical reach. His complex frame of moral judgment prefigures the writing of history as both rational inquiry and art.
7. Tacitus—Chronicler of Chaos
Tacitus, the second Roman giant of history writing, records the murderous string of emperors of the 1st century. You meet the first philosophical historian, who reflected deeply on the nature of purpose, action, and fate in a world turned upside down.
8. The Christian Claim to Continuity
The rise of Christianity brings a radical new twist to history writing—the ethos of continuity. The claim reconciles Christianity with its roots in Judaism and with the bloody history of Rome.
9. Augustine's City—Struggle for the Future
Augustine's theological writings spurred far-reaching innovations in interpreting history. You witness his passionate defense of Christianity against the pagans, in the dynamic opposition of his spiritual ideal to the corrupt societies of men.
10. Faith and the End of Time
You trace the twisting, regressive path of history writing in the Dark Ages. As the Roman Empire disintegrates, Christian annals and chronicles take prominence. The evolving tenets of history writing dissipate, often revealing a grim vision of apocalypse—a radical, divine ending.
11. The Birth of Criticism
You focus on the dramatic transformations in historical method in the Renaissance. A new brand of intellectual turns in disgust from the church, setting forth a secularized conception of human events. Classical history writing is reclaimed, then challenged, in defining history as a wholly reasoned inquiry.
12. The Reformation—The Disruption of History
Martin Luther's protest against church corruption ignites religious wars and a Protestant reconstruction of the church across much of Europe. You probe the far-reaching conflicts of historical interpretation that flowed from these events.
13. The Reformation—Continuity or Apocalypse?
You track the intimate embrace of historical interpretation and politics. In Britain, Protestant history writing legitimizes both the monarchy of Elizabeth I and the early, pre-Catholic English church. In the civil war under Charles I, the apocalyptic vision of the Protestant Puritans does battle with the king's claim to divine authority.
14. Enlightening History
Hume interprets English history as containing the seed of political and intellectual liberty. In charting the rise of commerce as an equalizing force, Hume becomes the first historian of progress and freedom.
15. The Rise and Triumph of Edward Gibbon
Hume interprets English history as containing the seed of political and intellectual liberty. In charting the rise of commerce as an equalizing force, Hume becomes the first historian of progress and freedom.
16. History as Science—Kant, Ranke, and Comte
You enlarge the scientific frame with Kant's bold "propositions" on universal history. Following Vico's notion of an inevitable pattern in historical development. Leopold von Ranke embodies Kant's challenge, writing histories based in meticulous study of primary sources, while Auguste Comte urges a rejection of the Divine, aiming to make history writing consummately rational.
17. The Whig Interpretation of History
Contrasting markedly with scientific principle, the worldview of the British Whigs serves a different purpose. Thomas Macaulay traces British political life to its "ancient constitution," based in deep notions of liberty. You probe the validity and role of this version of celebration, one of history writing's original impulses.
18. Romantic History
Romanticism rises to oppose the Enlightenment ideals of reason and order. In Germany, Johann von Herder champions the unique essence of the Volk—the people—in shaping historical events. Hegel argues history charting the dialectical evolution of nations as a divine movement toward ultimate freedom.
19. The Apocalypse of Karl Marx
You explore Marx's influential ideology and its roots in historical thought. Marx adopts Hegel's "dialectic" of progress but applies it to economics and materialism. With echoes of Augustine, Marx predicts an inevitable political apocalypse as the bourgeoisie engineers its own destruction.
20. Culture and History
In the latter 19th century, Wilhelm Dilthey and Jakob Burckhardt define the notion of cultural history, at the crossroads of individual experience and the larger social existence of the individual.
21. Civilization as History
You study the larger patterns of civilizations. Oswald Spengler's "arc of Destiny" prefigures the rise of Fascism. Freud and followers extend psychoanalytic theory to cultural and historical issues. Arnold Toynbee maps patterns of growth and deterioration of civilizations.
22. The American History Lesson
The tenets of history writing arise in startling contrasts in narratives of the American "experiment." Strong currents of decline and apocalypse figure in accounts of the Puritans. Conversely, the founding of the new nation is heralded as a fulfillment of the ideals of the Enlightenment.
23. Closing the Frontier
Here you follow deepening complexities of historical interpretation. The first great post-Revolution historians glorify the triumph of liberty and political autonomy. Darker views appear with the closing of the frontier and the disillusionment with the Civil War and its aftermath.
24. The Value of History
You follow changes in the discipline of history over the last century, considering the influence on history writing of philosophy and ideology. You mark trends in history writing through Marxist, structuralist, and postmodern phases, in ruminating on the history writer's dedication to truth.
2. Homer and Herodotus
You probe the pivotal transition between epic storytelling, the literary or religious interpretation of political events, and written history. Herodotus, in his account of the Persian Wars, breaks new ground, rejecting the causal power of the gods and the right to describe the past without evidence.
3. Marching with Xenophon
Leading from Herodotus's conception of history as celebration, Xenophon writes of dazzling military exploits he personally lived. Thucydides' firsthand account of the Peloponnesian War brings a starkly different cast of questioning and futility.
It is the first instinct of tyrants to take away, or to rewrite, a conquered peoples’ history because it takes away any means of comparing their present state of oppression with any happier days of freedom and independence.
4. The Unhappy Thucydides
Here you look deeply into the vision of Thucydides—arguably the beginning of true history writing. Thucydides asks uncomfortable questions and draws equally uncomfortable conclusions about chance, free will, human nature, and the fixtures of character that rule civilizations.
Study of human nature.
5. Men of Mixed Motives—Polybius and Sallust
The personal character of the historian comes dramatically into play. Polybius, the Greek, living in luxurious exile in Rome, becomes an apologist for Roman conquest. Sallust, the Roman, writes to condemn the moral degeneracy of Rome—while shielding his own complicity.
6. The Grandeur That Was Livy
Here you contemplate the monumental achievements of Titus Livius. In his universal history of "the world that was Rome," grounded in centuries of Roman annals, Livy dramatically extends both the timeframe of history and its geographical reach. His complex frame of moral judgment prefigures the writing of history as both rational inquiry and art.
7. Tacitus—Chronicler of Chaos
Tacitus, the second Roman giant of history writing, records the murderous string of emperors of the 1st century. You meet the first philosophical historian, who reflected deeply on the nature of purpose, action, and fate in a world turned upside down.
8. The Christian Claim to Continuity
The rise of Christianity brings a radical new twist to history writing—the ethos of continuity. The claim reconciles Christianity with its roots in Judaism and with the bloody history of Rome.
9. Augustine's City—Struggle for the Future
Augustine's theological writings spurred far-reaching innovations in interpreting history. You witness his passionate defense of Christianity against the pagans, in the dynamic opposition of his spiritual ideal to the corrupt societies of men.
10. Faith and the End of Time
You trace the twisting, regressive path of history writing in the Dark Ages. As the Roman Empire disintegrates, Christian annals and chronicles take prominence. The evolving tenets of history writing dissipate, often revealing a grim vision of apocalypse—a radical, divine ending.
11. The Birth of Criticism
You focus on the dramatic transformations in historical method in the Renaissance. A new brand of intellectual turns in disgust from the church, setting forth a secularized conception of human events. Classical history writing is reclaimed, then challenged, in defining history as a wholly reasoned inquiry.
12. The Reformation—The Disruption of History
Martin Luther's protest against church corruption ignites religious wars and a Protestant reconstruction of the church across much of Europe. You probe the far-reaching conflicts of historical interpretation that flowed from these events.
13. The Reformation—Continuity or Apocalypse?
You track the intimate embrace of historical interpretation and politics. In Britain, Protestant history writing legitimizes both the monarchy of Elizabeth I and the early, pre-Catholic English church. In the civil war under Charles I, the apocalyptic vision of the Protestant Puritans does battle with the king's claim to divine authority.
14. Enlightening History
Hume interprets English history as containing the seed of political and intellectual liberty. In charting the rise of commerce as an equalizing force, Hume becomes the first historian of progress and freedom.
15. The Rise and Triumph of Edward Gibbon
Hume interprets English history as containing the seed of political and intellectual liberty. In charting the rise of commerce as an equalizing force, Hume becomes the first historian of progress and freedom.
16. History as Science—Kant, Ranke, and Comte
You enlarge the scientific frame with Kant's bold "propositions" on universal history. Following Vico's notion of an inevitable pattern in historical development. Leopold von Ranke embodies Kant's challenge, writing histories based in meticulous study of primary sources, while Auguste Comte urges a rejection of the Divine, aiming to make history writing consummately rational.
17. The Whig Interpretation of History
Contrasting markedly with scientific principle, the worldview of the British Whigs serves a different purpose. Thomas Macaulay traces British political life to its "ancient constitution," based in deep notions of liberty. You probe the validity and role of this version of celebration, one of history writing's original impulses.
18. Romantic History
Romanticism rises to oppose the Enlightenment ideals of reason and order. In Germany, Johann von Herder champions the unique essence of the Volk—the people—in shaping historical events. Hegel argues history charting the dialectical evolution of nations as a divine movement toward ultimate freedom.
19. The Apocalypse of Karl Marx
You explore Marx's influential ideology and its roots in historical thought. Marx adopts Hegel's "dialectic" of progress but applies it to economics and materialism. With echoes of Augustine, Marx predicts an inevitable political apocalypse as the bourgeoisie engineers its own destruction.
20. Culture and History
In the latter 19th century, Wilhelm Dilthey and Jakob Burckhardt define the notion of cultural history, at the crossroads of individual experience and the larger social existence of the individual.
21. Civilization as History
You study the larger patterns of civilizations. Oswald Spengler's "arc of Destiny" prefigures the rise of Fascism. Freud and followers extend psychoanalytic theory to cultural and historical issues. Arnold Toynbee maps patterns of growth and deterioration of civilizations.
22. The American History Lesson
The tenets of history writing arise in startling contrasts in narratives of the American "experiment." Strong currents of decline and apocalypse figure in accounts of the Puritans. Conversely, the founding of the new nation is heralded as a fulfillment of the ideals of the Enlightenment.
23. Closing the Frontier
Here you follow deepening complexities of historical interpretation. The first great post-Revolution historians glorify the triumph of liberty and political autonomy. Darker views appear with the closing of the frontier and the disillusionment with the Civil War and its aftermath.
24. The Value of History
You follow changes in the discipline of history over the last century, considering the influence on history writing of philosophy and ideology. You mark trends in history writing through Marxist, structuralist, and postmodern phases, in ruminating on the history writer's dedication to truth.
April 20, 2022
Allen Guelzo is an excellent orator but the content was superficial. It was not what I was expecting. Each lecture seemed to oversimplify whoever Guelzo was covering. It wasn't what I was expecting as it was less historiography and more a history of history writers and their times.
November 6, 2015
Provides a good foundation for understanding the trends in history writing and historical analysis. Highly recommended.
Read
May 1, 2022Guelzo’s lectures (found in The Great Courses) were a delight to take in, as I’ve been enraptured with history nearly my entire life. He organizes his material by taking us on a chronological tour of great historians, starting with the Greeks (Herodotus and Thucydides), Romans (Livy and Tacitus), the influence of Christian thinkers on historical writing (Eusebius and Augustine), the influence of the renaissance and reformation on historical writing, the enlightenment and the influence of science and rationality in historical writing, the influence of the Romantics, and finally the influence of nationalism in England and the United States.
Guelzo defines history as: a humanistic prose narrative of events based on systematic inquiry into words, deeds, ideas, conflicts, and sufferings that occurred in the past and that have left verifiable evidentiary trail in the present.
He describes two major approaches to history: 1) the deductive, where a writer begins with a theory of how events unfold and then finds evidence to fit the theory and 2) the inductive, where an historian collects evidence first and tries to later design a meaningful theory out of them. Even inductive historians, however, have preconceived notions that affect what they gather.
Guelzo also provides interesting motives and approaches seen in the various historians he explores: those who write history to celebrate a people, declension (those who bemoan the decline of a people), apocalyptic (those who believe either the gods or fate intervene to destroy peoples), scientific (just the facts, ma’am), writers of biography, cultural history, geographic history, history as escapism, and inversion approaches.
I found the material helpful and fascinating, leaving me wanting to learn more, both about the various historians and about the philosophies that influenced them.
Guelzo defines history as: a humanistic prose narrative of events based on systematic inquiry into words, deeds, ideas, conflicts, and sufferings that occurred in the past and that have left verifiable evidentiary trail in the present.
He describes two major approaches to history: 1) the deductive, where a writer begins with a theory of how events unfold and then finds evidence to fit the theory and 2) the inductive, where an historian collects evidence first and tries to later design a meaningful theory out of them. Even inductive historians, however, have preconceived notions that affect what they gather.
Guelzo also provides interesting motives and approaches seen in the various historians he explores: those who write history to celebrate a people, declension (those who bemoan the decline of a people), apocalyptic (those who believe either the gods or fate intervene to destroy peoples), scientific (just the facts, ma’am), writers of biography, cultural history, geographic history, history as escapism, and inversion approaches.
I found the material helpful and fascinating, leaving me wanting to learn more, both about the various historians and about the philosophies that influenced them.
April 1, 2025
Making History: How Great Historians Interpret the Past by Allen Guelzo is halfway between a history of historians and an introduction to historiography by way of historians. You learn about some of the motivating archetypal approaches to history, as well as the ways in which history is written through the lens of a chronological survey of key historical figures. You learn that historians engage in an act of choosing among facts, that they interpret those facts, and there is often some preceding way of thinking that informs that process. Guelzo is at his strongest in the beginning of the course, but it loses some of its oomph towards the later third. The content is good, and Guelzo is - as ever - a remarkably capable lecturer. Its just not as good as the beginning, as it feels truncated and almost too brief. Towards concluding lecture is a bit of commentary on how to view the act of creating history, and the state of history in relation to the academy and postmodernism. Its good, but it feels like its too important to be left shunted as an exploration in a concluding and summarizing lecture.
Still, it is very well done.
Still, it is very well done.
January 19, 2025
The books starts with Ancient Greece and Homer and covers through American history.
For me I found the parts from Ancient Greece and Roman civilizations most interesting as that is the area of history I'm weakest on.
Very much worth the time. I was lucky enough to pick it up When these Great Courses were part of the Audible Plus Catalog, which ended 12/31/24.
For me I found the parts from Ancient Greece and Roman civilizations most interesting as that is the area of history I'm weakest on.
Very much worth the time. I was lucky enough to pick it up When these Great Courses were part of the Audible Plus Catalog, which ended 12/31/24.
June 13, 2022
Essentially, a history of historians and a look at how history writing and interpretation of historical events has evolved over the past few millenia. An interesting topic, but in the end I didn't feel like I got all that much out of it. Guelzo somehow manages to frame his lectures in both a too broad and too narrow fashion at the same time, with the end result remaining rather superficial.
May 2, 2022
Erudite, far-sighted, legible and spirited. One of the best of the Great Courses. A great primer on the question of 'what is history?'
March 1, 2023
Had been hoping for a more theory driven dive into historiography. Didn't deliver.
March 24, 2015
The subject should have been interesting, but alas it was to broad and too narrow at the same time. The instructor concentrated on ancient historians and their writings, musing on whether the history was recitation of historical numbers (Roman annals); eyewitness to the events (Polynesian wars); or historical research. At the end the instructor made point to say their could have art history, religious history, or all sorts of genre. What ended up was a mush. He spent time discussing has an issue was concentrated or not concentrated - a day of Bastille or the facts surrounding the day of Bastille. His efforts turned out to me more historical musings with way too much time on Karl Marx. The subject was sort of interesting, but not one of the better courses in Great Courses. Pass this one by.
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December 9, 2023This course is a very engaging series of lectures on how history writing is done and the different approaches the greatest historians have taken, e.g., celebratory, decline, continuity, didactic/warning, etc. Professor Guelzo makes what could be a very dry topic quite lively and intellectually stimulating.
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