About this title: Since its first publication in 1961 E.H. Carr's "What is History?" has established itself as the classic introduction to the subject. Ranging across topics such as historical objectivity, society and the individual, the nature of causation, and the possibility of progress, Carr delivered an incisive text that still has power to provoke debate today. For this fortieth anniversary reissue, Richard J. Evans has written an extensive new introduction that discusses the origins and the impact of the book, and assesses its relevance in the age of the 21st century postmodernism and epistemological ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Random House Inc, Westminster, Maryland, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1967
ISBN-13:9780394703916ISBN:039470391X
Description: Good. No Dust Jacket as Issued. 12mo-over 6¾"-7¾" tall. Book shows moderate wear/ spine tight, pages clean/ covers creased and scuffed; moderate edge wear/ corners and spine hinge creased/ several pages and page tips creased. read more
Description: Acceptable. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Random House Inc, New York
Date Published: 1967
ISBN-13:9780394703916ISBN:039470391X
Description: Very Good. No Jacket as Issued. Very light edgewear to the covers with a small bump to the back cover at the top corner. Otherwise a clean, tight copy with an uncreased spine. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, New York
Date Published: 1965
Description: 209p., later printing, dj mildly shelfworn. (The George macaulay Trevelyan Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge January-March 1961) read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Book
Date Published: 1961
Description: Good/No Jacket. Tight, slightly aged pages with some underlining. Cover has faint crease on spine, light toning, else good copy for its age. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 1967
ISBN-13:9780394703916ISBN:039470391X
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Edition: REV ED
Binding: Hardback
Publisher: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2002
ISBN-13:9780333977019ISBN:0333977017
Description: BRAND NEW HARDBACK. 224 pages. (224 pages) to mark the 40th anniversary of this text, this updated volume reviews the state of the discipline at the beginning of the 21st century. renowned scholars ask and seek to answer carr's question for a new generation of historians: what does it mean to study history at the start of the 21st century? index edition rev ed (Hardback) read more
"I bought a 50¢ copy of this book years ago on a bargain bin spree at either Housing Works or the Strand. Until recently, every time I paged through it I couldn't help from deriding its maddeningly simple-minded premise: in a series of lectures at Cambridge in the 1950s, Carr set out to actually answer the question what is history.
Is history a science? Are there "causes" for historical events? What is fact? And, yes, this is as boring as one might expect. You advance through a few pages of this kind of freshman exegesis and you start asking "Are you serious?" over and over.
Yet, and of course, Carr wins you over, oh word booty. He builds on these simple questions and lays out a truly compelling progressive theory of history. He lets you in on conversations he's been having with himself about his profession, the thing that clearly animates his entire life, and it's an honest and rare little inspiration.
Plus, he gently mocks conservatives now and then. Here's a wonderful bit about the hidden cost of conservatism that made me mentally pump my fist: In ordinary life we are more often involved than we sometimes care to admit in the necessity of preferring the lesser evil, or of doing evil that good may come. In history the question is sometimes discussed under the rubric 'the cost of progress' or 'the price of revolution.' This is misleading. As Bacon says in the essay On Innovations, 'the forward retention of custom is as turbulent a thing as an innovation.' The cost of conservation falls just as heavily on the under-privileged as the cost of innovation on those who are deprived of their privileges. The thesis that the good of some justifies the sufferings of others is implicit in all government, and is just as much a conservative as a radical doctrine."
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