Content area
Full text
RR 2003/93 A Companion to Western Historical Thought Edited by Lloyd Kramer and Sarah Maza Blackwell Oxford 2002 xi + 520 pp. ISBN 0 631 21714 2
L85.00
Blackwell Companions to History
Keywords History, National cultures, Politics, Society
Review DOI 10.1108/09504120310461879
This companion seeks to examine the cultural history of Western historical thought from Biblical times to the contemporary. In their introduction, Kramer and Maza see historical thought as "narratives that tell stories about the past" that generally seek "to explain how both individuals and social or political systems change" (p. 5). The companion is therefore expansive in its subject and links with other disciplines, such as ancient history and the classics, anthropology, Biblical studies and theology, especially in the early chapters on historiography of pre-modern societies.
The volume starts with a brief introduction to the contributors, who are mostly employed in US academic institutions,...