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

by J.W. Burrow

Treating the practice of history not as an isolated pursuit but as an aspect of human society and an essential part of the culture of the West, John Burrow magnificently brings to life and explains the distinctive qualities found in the work of historians from the ancient Egyptians and Greeks to the present. With a light step and graceful narrative, he gathers together over 2,500 years of the moments and decisions that have helped create Western identity. This unique approach is an incredible lens with which to view the past. Standing alone in its ambition, scale and fascination, Burrow's history of history is certain to stand the test of time.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World History, Ancient History, Books About Books, Reference, Philosophy

517 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

John Wyon Burrow was an English historian of intellectual history. His published works include assessments of the Whig interpretation of history and of historiography generally. According to The Independent: "John Burrow was one of the leading intellectual historians of his generation. His pioneering work marked the beginning of a more sophisticated approach to the history of the social sciences, one that did not treat the past as being of interest only in so far as it anticipated the present."

Reviews

[Ramon Sunico · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Burrow was a member of the faculty when I was studying History of Ideas at the Sussex University near Brighton. My supervisor then was Professor Stefan Collini but Dr Burrow commented and marked a few of my term papers. At the time, his reputation as one of the brighter lights in the History of ideas was just getting established.
Years after my stay in Sussex, I came across this book on top of a stack of other books that my friend, a well known historian, was planning to donate to a school library. I told him about my acquaintance with the author and asked how the book was. It turned out that he hadn't read it, so I asked if I could.
From the opening chapter on Herodotus, I was hooked on this rare, expansive survey of the great Western historians.
Burrow's encyclopaedic grasp of how historians have "done history" makes him one of the few minds able to fulfill such an ambitious project. His prose style may seem dry at first but pretty soon, he had me chuckling over passages throughout the whole book with the subtle astringency of his wit.
People used to overly punctuated writing may find some of his longer sentences too difficult to follow. Perhaps, because he is so well-read, he feels no need to clutter his prose with too many commas.
At any rate, by the end of the book (which I delayed reaching because I was having so much fun reading it), I happily realized that I was not only enjoying descriptions of the various achievements of historians over time, I had actually been led by Burrow to an appreciation of how our expectation and understanding of Writing (and Teaching?) History has changed.
The final gem though is Burrow's self-effacing conclusion that glows with a deep and intellectual humility that is so hard to find in so much of the self-promotional (and, so other-trashing) academic discourse I stumble over every day.

[Al Bità · Rating 3 out of 5]

This represents a grandiose overview of Western History using its most relevant historians as sources. As such the ride can be exhilarating and exciting — it reveals some major concerns of Western thoughts and their influences on subsequent thoughts and feelings. The author is too good an historian to suggest that those he selects for his review were pure originators — he spends some time dealing with actual and possible other sources for each work he considers. From this perspective the book provides an extensive overview without necessarily going into detail with the niceties that might preoccupy a professional historian. Even so, the ordinary reader might some parts of this work disconcertingly vertiginous — but the overall thrust of the narrative is in strong, capable hands.

Perhaps the most valuable part of this overview of significant Western histories lies in what conclusions the reader may make regarding them. Some conclusion I came to (whether accurately or not is perhaps besides the point) include:

• all 'significant' Western histories are written by men. Women virtually disappear.

• all historians see their own times as either corrupt or decadent ot both, and see virtue only in the actions of past 'heroes'.

• in considering the virtuous past deeds done by men, one also realises that the concerns of the historian narrow down to only a very few 'significant' personages'. So while women are virtually absent from the narrative, so also are 90% of all the men. 'History' become a very narrow narrative where a few mythical (past) male individuals are chosen and glorified to represent 'virtues' for the decadent present, and thus used to provide a source of wisdom and illumination for the future.

These conclusions hardly bespeak of history, one of the most influential literary genres created by Western writers, as being truly representative of humanity on any level. As one comes closed to our own times, Burrow widens the field more, to include the plethora of 'new', 'revisionist' and other histories which are currently flooding the market in various disguises, not only in books, but also in film and television documentaries — often in tandem. "History" today can apply to just about any subject or discipline one might care to pay attention to.

If there is one thing this book can do it is to identify those significant Western ideas which scholars and literary persons have used to influence, for good or ill, future generations. How relevant such histories might remain for modern and future readers is problematic, but this work can be a good starting point for further discussion and reading on the subject.

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Contenidos de interés, formas correctas pero ásperas.-

Género. Ensayo.

Lo que nos cuenta. Repaso de 24 siglos de nuestra historia, de Heródoto al siglo XX como dice el subtítulo, con la intención de ver qué ha interesado a los historiadores del pasado en cada momento, qué partes, cómo presentan sus trabajos, cómo ha evolucionado la presentación con el tiempo, cómo reflejan sus correspondientes tiempos y los porqués de cada cuestión.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

[Jamie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A reading of [Walter] Scott’s work prompted the German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) to declare, famously, that every epoch was equal in the sight of God. The task of the historian, he thought, was to penetrate empathetically to its inner essence, to discover ‘how it essentially was’ (wie es eigentlich gewesen), not to dismiss it as backward or barbarous, as the historians of the eighteenth century had done."
- Richard Evans, The Pursuit of Power: Europe: 1815-1914 (p. 508)

Because history is so much more than just names and dates, facts and figures, it requires endless interpretation to extract meaning from the raw data. As a result, each generation re-writes history to illuminate its own times and support its own myths. It can be used to support wars or condemn them; to argue for the divine rights of kings or turn the idea into a joke; to validate religion or excoriate it. Even after new findings and enhanced scholarship techniques have rendered history books factually obsolete they still retain value for what they can tell about the times in which they were written.

In this book Professor Burrow examines the overarching themes of history writing: the times that are depicted, the age in which it was written, and how we use history to gain insight into our own era, using the past to make sense of the present. For instance, the book was published in 2016, and this comment, which in other times might have been simply a broad observation about the uses of power, resonates today as we see democratic institutions under assault by the forces which would overturn them: “The mark of fanaticism is the pursuit of advantage without limit, the love of terror for its own sake. Those who, in Thucydides, rationally employ power to their advantage sometimes stress that their behaviour is normal, according to human nature. But human beings released from the ties of convention are creatures of irrational extremes.” (p. 45)

History begins with Herodotus and Thucydides, for good reason. Before them what passed for history was pure mythology, or obsequious praise of whatever thug happened to be on the throne at the time. Herodotus gave history a sweeping narrative of civilizations past and present, and Thucydides applied clear, dispassionate analysis of events (including his own dismissal and exile after a failed military campaign). The standards these two historians set 2500 years ago are still used today.

The scope of this book is so broad, and it covers so much ground that I struggled to find a unifying narrative to describe it. I suppose the best thing I can say is that you should read it yourself. However, I highlighted a number of passages which I thought were illuminating, and decided to add them below in lieu of my own halting interpretations.

- by the first century, when Livy was writing his history (from 30 BC onward), it had come to seem that there was a dreadful paradox in Rome’s success: the qualities which had procured it had been subverted by the wealth and ease which it had brought. (p. 92)

- Orthodoxy had to be forged in the face of competing zealotries and of the intellectual problems posed by the assimilation of Greek – above all Platonic – intellectual traditions to those of the Hebrew sacred writings and the Gospels. (p. 178-179)

- The question of the unity of the Church was essentially the same as that of its continuity; it has to be remembered that by the time of Constantine’s conversion the ministry of Christ was a distant as the death of Louis XIV from ourselves. (p. 179)

- But the greatest contribution of humanism to history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not neoclassical prescriptions for narrative historiography, but the application of the methods of humanist critical scholarship to the study of the past. (p. 287)

- In discerning the late-Roman [legal] codes, the sixteenth-century French jurists were in a sense discovering medieval history – though not yet by that name – and recognizing medieval Europe not merely as ignorant, barbarous and uncomprehending, but as creative. For jurists who wished to discern the origins and guiding principles of their own laws, the Middle Ages were fundamental. (p. 291)

- We are told of Edward I of England circulating the monasteries, where such documentary “memory” was most likely to be preserved, if only in the form of recorded custom, for support for his claim to the overlordship of Scotland; when he had the opportunity, he destroyed Scottish archives. (p. 293)

- In The Wealth of Nations (III.iii and IV) Smith gave his classic account of the gradual erosion of feudalism not by legislation but simply by human nature presented with the opportunities of the market. Given the increasing availability of goods as a result of the productivity of the towns and of commerce, the great feudal lords are drawn to expend their agricultural surplus on these rather than converting it into military and political power by keeping armed retainers and by imposing military obligations on their tenants; instead these obligation are increasingly commuted for money rents. (p. 325)

- in [Edward Gibbon’s 1761 Essay on the Study of Literature] he invoked the possibility of a synthesis of the old and new models of intellectual achievement in the ‘philosophic historian’ – someone who would be learned in the literature or antiquity, devoted to factual accuracy, but also capable of seeing in history a tissue of events connected by deeper causes than those most apparent, and able to present them coherently and perspicuously. (p. 333)

- It is difficult now to recognized how innovative was Gibbon’s choice of his life’s work. It was not the practice to write histories of the ancient world (though Adam Ferguson had published a history of the Roman republic), because the ancient historians were thought unsurpassable, both through merit and through superior access. Instead one wrote commentaries...or imitated them on other periods. (p. 334)

- For Gibbon, theological controversies – on which he had made himself expert – promoted civil strife, while Christian ethics, and particularly monastic asceticism, detracted from the martial virtues. Although it does not stand alone, the humanist formula of decay left deep marks on Gibbon’s history and outlook: the fatal sequence of virtue, conquest, luxury, corruption, loss of freedom, and ultimate surrender to hardy barbarian conquerors is take by Gibbon as something like a universal law, for the barbarian conquerors themselves are, inevitably, launched into the same sequence. (p. 337)

- Gibbon, though he deprecated the fiercer attacks on religion by the French philosophes – he calls Voltaire a fanatic – approached it, of course, with the rational and humane distaste of his age for blind superstition and ‘enthusiastic’ zeal, which Hume had distinguished as the two poles between which the religious mentality oscillated. (p. 338)

- Both Macaulay and Carlyle stood at the apex of a long movement, from the eighteenth century, before austere professionalism spoiled the game, to render history for the reader in its full sensuous and emotional immediacy and circumstantiality. (p. 362)

- In the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries history meant above all political history, including, notably, in modern history, a focus on the relations of states in the European inter-state system. It also included constitutional and legal origins and, with increasing prestige, economic history. (p. 428)

- It was faith in these points of access to the divine mind which underwrote the labour Ranke devoted to reconstructing, on a scrupulously investigated documentary basis, what to him were the central themes of European history. It was the historian, and he alone, who could discern the hand of God in unique historical configurations of events and forces. (p. 432)

- It is the nature of historical revision to have no end: revisions of revisions are no doubt taking place even now. This is the norm for the historical profession. (p. 462)

[Jon Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good survey of the art/discipline of the historian throughout time. It's written from a Christian perspective which makes it a curious thing to start with the Greeks instead of Moses. Academics may not consider Moses a historian, but he certainly was. Either way, good read!

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

As others in the Good Reads community have pointed out, this book is one in which the reader might skip around chapters, and read when one is interested in one subject, or period of history. Most of us should not attempt to read this tomb all at one sitting. Burrow references many historians I have never heard of, and skips over some that I have read. This is the sort of book one might keep on their bookshelf, and refer to when one becomes interested in a certain historical era. I particularly enjoyed learning more about Cortés, and the conquest of the Aztec empire.. It is books like this that keep me humble, as I realize how very little I know, and how much more there is to learn. One last thought. One of my English teachers stressed and stressed the importance of having a working bibliography. Well this book has one of the best working bibliographies I've seen.

[Kt Wakeling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finally finished my first-year of Uni recommended reading (I graduated in 2021)

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Burrow did a relatively good job collecting and organizing two thousand years' worth of history. His section on ancient historians is thoroughly researched and well written. This secton was probably my favorite out of the entire book for it provided detailed information about the earliest historians. Burrow included excerpts from these historians' work brining out the personality of the historians and how their books were shaped by their own times and experiences. Burrow continues on to the Christian era, where historians abadoned the aim of being objective, while relentlessly promoting orthodox Christianity. These historians traced what they saw as God's plan in history.

From this era progressing to the dark ages and then the Renaissance, Burrow discusses the viewpoints of these historians and how they are influenced by the classics. Historians such as Bruni, Machiavellie, and Guiccardini all modeled their histories to those of the ancient Rome and Greece. They included speeches (sometimes "re-writing" them for they did not write them verbatim), looked for the lessons that history could teach, historical leaders, and societal relationships.

From the 17th century on, Burrow includes a multitude of historians, dictating their approaches and their histories. Often times, Burrow digresses more into the history of the time rather than the viewpoint of the historians, leaving the reader somewhat confused about the historiography of history.

Burrow's final two chapters discuss the professionalization of history. This includes the introduction of history as a subject into the universities, its aim in the 19th century in which German influence tried to make it more like a science, and then in the 20th century when other disciplines started to influence it, i.e. anthropology. History became more specialized, providing more analysis than narrative. The 20th century sees an emergence of more specific history, i.e. women, minority, and environmental to name a few.

Burrow does not do the later eras of history any favors. He spends considerably less amount of time on the historiography as the book comes closer to contemporary times. This could possibly be attributed to the great number of historians now versus the few in classical times, or Burrow could be uninspired by modern history. Either way, Burrow's well-researched book gives readers a concise introduction into the world of historiography.

[Michael Reilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a history of history writing from the Greeks to 2007, when it was published.

Burrows does several things at once. The first is descriptive. He explains what the great classical works of history where about and he gives good chunks of the writing to give a sample of how they told history. He secondly analyzes how they gathered the information for their histories. The histories evolve from the Greeks relying on personal knowledge, oral history and scant writing to the modern micro-analysis of documents.

Burrow also looks at the biases, presumptions and goals of the historians. The Greeks and Romans tried to show the working out of the heroic flaws of great leaders. The medieval historians looked for the proof of Christianity in the movement of history. Modern historians try to emphasize the importance of the common citizens and daily life on the course of history.

The book packs in a pile of interesting stuff but Burrow is not a particularly engaging writer. There are many sentences like this; "The method was philological, and its chief purificatory agent in the search for for the authentic text was the detection of anachronism. " Now that is a perfectly well constructed and grammatical sentence, but is a sentence which has to be read several times, slowly, to get the point. Burrow writes in the high academic style which is not reader friendly.

Burrow focuses on the great historians. He has full meaty chapters on Thucydides, Herodotus, Livy, Tacitus, Bede, Gibbon, Macaulay, Prescott, Parkman, Ranke, the modern Marxist and Annales schools and many more. I am glad I persevered, but it was a long journey.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Phew! It took me a while to finish this book but it was worth it.

I was largely interested in the period from the Romans to the Middle Ages and began to get a bit bored when it came to historians from about 16th Century to 19th Century (Gibbon and Diaz being the exceptions). The author spends a disproportionate amount of time with these earlier historians (which was ok with me) and seems to end up discussing 20th Century historians only briefly. I got the feeling that this was not from lack of interest but rather the opposite - he felt that he could not do justice to them in a broad book such as this one.

Some people have commented on his style and I must agree that it is a bit convoluted. For example see the first sentence from the prologue below:

History - the elaborated, secular, prose narrative (all these qualifications are necessary) of public events, based on inquiry - was born, we can claim with confidence, in Greece between roughly 450 and 430 BC.

Don't worry, it doesn't carry on in that style throughout the book but the author does occasionally fall back into it. On the whole the style is very readable if a little stuffy.

I can see myself dipping into this book as a reference or as a prelude to reading the original. Very useful.

[Greg Strandberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got about 85 pages into this book before taking it back to the library. The reason was simple - it's boring. I could say dry, but it's more boring than that.

Oh how I wanted to like this book! I thought it would be like Collingwood's book, the Idea of History, but this one gets bogged down in too many sentences that we just don't need.

I like that Burrow is going for a new historiographical approach to the entire sweep of history. He does a very good job of that...if you're an academic. If you're a regular person that reads for fun, this book is not for you.

I skipped forward a bit and looked at the analysis of Edward Gibbon as well as some of the 20th century historians. He does a good job explaining them, it's just that after you read a page you often forget what you just read.

If you're in a History 400- or 500-level course this book might save you some time on reading the original source material. If you're an average Joe, I'd suggest a general world history book.

[Tess · Rating 4 out of 5]

One thing I adore about this book is the works cited pages at the back... chock-full of things that I want to read after this chewy, lovely epic tale is done.

I want to be a history teacher - more than anything - and this text is simply wonderful. I've especially enjoyed the section on Thucydides. Burrow has a very easy-to-read writing style, and while some students find the history of academic scholarship dull and boring, I find it an amazing tale.

[Nick Black · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazon 2008-05-21, recommendation from aldaily.com. The second-best general audience book I read in 2008, behind only John Darwin's After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405.

[Mike Clinton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a reread after several years, with the purpose of assigning it to a couple of history majors who might find it informative and interesting. It takes a historian or committed history major to appreciate this book--"a history of histories", after all--as an indulgence shared with the author.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once a year there’s a book that jumps out as my favorite of the year, and I think this one is going to be it. I couldn’t put it down and each new chapter managed to be just as fascinating as the last. The early Greek and Roman history, medieval chroniclers, Whig historians, the German schools, the Annales school, it’s difficult to single any of them out. It almost feels like there’s not much else worth reading after this bc it probably won’t match up, except that part of what I liked was his description of major historical works, so I’ve added quite a few to my list to read.

Anyone that thinks there is little discernment left in the world of historiography (which I partly felt before reading this) should try Burrow. He manages to flip basically every school of thought on its head while not losing the inherent richness of their works of history. It’s hard not to read into the manner in which he structures the book, which is decidedly not a presentation of history writing as progressing from less developed to more developed in the modern world, as a belief that today’s market of a large quantity of history books and resulting narratives about history does not equate to a greater understanding of human history.

[Connor Oxspring · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you are a student of history, this will give you an overview of sources throughout history and the biases that surround them.

If you are not looking to pass an exam and are interested in history, this is an incredibly long slog.

In fact, I would imagine this would still be the case if you were a student...

The book provides an overview and timeline of historical writers throughout the last 2500 years. If you are bored already, I would give this book a skip.

Starting with Herodotus, the first historian, all the way to the 21st century, with the invention of historical documentaries.

The book is incredibly informative and gives you an appreciation for the past and those who have dedicated their lives to the documentation of our collective histories.

That said, it is a very difficult read.

Not in content, but in its writing style.

I can see its value, and if you wish to proceed, be prepared for several (that's being kind) loooonnngg (with many breaks) reading sessions.

Or heck, use it as a way to nod off - a few pages and you will be out cold.

[Dropbear123 · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5

Overall pretty good. 520 pages of main text which covers western historiography from antiquity to 20th century historical changes like focusing more on disadvantaged groups (history from below) and 'microhistories'. Lots of chapters each about 20-30 pages that talk about who the historian was, summarises their work, how theyy wrote it and the impact it had.I enjoyed the ancient bits and the more recent chapters like the professionalisation of history as a subject in the 19th century. But I didn't really like the medieval and renaissance historians and mostly glanced over those chapters (I found the Bede chapter to be quite good but that's about it). Fairly scholarly/academic in tone but I think it is sort of accessible. Not really a light read though.

If you're looking for an overview of western historical practice I'd say this is worth a read but if that topic doesn't interest you then give this book a miss.

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title implies, this is a survey of Historians and a brief description of their general approach to History and how these approaches have changed over the centuries. Obviously only a few of the available historians are mentioned, but I was very surprised and happy to find that most ones I have liked made the cut. Herodotus starts it off with his chatty survey of peoples and events, followed by Thucydides with his reportorial style, both of them among my favorites. I found that I enjoyed reading about the historians I had read more than learning about new ones, but a few made it onto the 'want to read' list. And I was amazed at the way Borrow was able to summarize broad trends and find common themes over 2000 years of history and historians.
My only quibble was with Borrow's style which involved long sentences with many proliferate comments. It slowed down the narrative, hence 4 stars for an otherwise very enjoyable book.

[Jeanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF @ 12%

I know I should have given this book more of a chance before giving up on it, but I feel like I can already tell I won't be enjoying the rest of the book 60 pages in.

I went into this book looking for an analysis of the context that each of these authors lived in, and the impact that it had on their works, but the author seemed to only provide surface-level analysis of that and seemed more content to give me a summary of what each of the author's covered in their works. In addition, the author was fond of overly long and complicated sentences, making this a dense and drawn-out read that was very difficult to get through without nodding off.

I feel like I could have continued on if the book had only one of these issues, but a combination of both just turned me off from even thinking of getting past the Greek authors.

[Acco Spoot · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've sceptically avoided Historiography in the past, it's never felt like anything more than a review or analysis. This book has enlightened me to the various options available to a historian, and given me a better understanding of how and why a historian writes as they do.

There are issues. A distinct lack of voices from outside of Europe, and a reference to America which makes that silence even louder, the section on Marxist history feels more of an obligation than interest, which is a shame as it's a path I hoped to take.

[Charles Ossola · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant and remarkably erudite study of 2500 years of historiography

Burrow' s command of the intellectual roots of historians, social scientists, commentators, and intellectuals is astonishing and riveting. Every sentence is meaningful. It's dense but hugely rewarding. Makes you wonder whether you are truly educated since there is so much in this book that most of us "amateur historians" do not know.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn’t get through more than a quarter of the book. While it is obviously well researched the writing style leaves much to be desired. As a history aficionado I hoped for something different than what I found here. In hindsight, I think I was led astray by the title and summary - I found something overly verbose and heady instead.

[Michael Grizer (He-Him) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting discussion of how history writing has changed over the years. I really enjoyed the first couple chapters (history before 1500). But it got pretty academic and very detailed after that. He doesn't explain much history itself, just critiques the authors. So if you aren't familiar with the actual historical events, it is challenging to understand his points.

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only was able to get about halfway through this book. Very well-researched, but a little too dense in spots. If you're looking for a book to show how the writing of history has evolved over the centuries, this is a very detailed exploration of the topic.

[Jonathon McKenney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to give 4 but it was just so effing long and dense! A little over my head. The early chapters on Greece and Rome, 4/5 and 5/5. Then the slog through medieval times was brutal. Modernity gave us some 4/5 but not enough to uplift. Hugely ambitious, I respect him immensely for it.

[SB · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

This is such an incredibly ambitious book I have trouble rating it at all. It's a good historical map of Western histories but it's probably of more value as a reference book you can refer to for specific chapters.

[Nadvornix · Rating 4 out of 5]

It didn't give me as much understanding of what are different paradigms of interpreting history. Or what kind of a distortion different approaches to history makes. But it is a nice history of various histories.

[Patricia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book needed more analysis and less summarizing.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took me a long while to get through it but it was very interesting and a good read.

[Bill Croysdale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book for historians. Dry in parts, but overall very interesting on how the writing of history began and progressed.