Alphabetical Bibliography

Ankersmit, Frank R.
(1994) History and Tropology: The Rise and Fall of Metaphor. Berkeley; University of California Press.
(1983) Narrative Logic. The Hague; Nijhoff. (An interesting explanation of the internal logic used by historians in thecomposition of historical narratives. One question that runs through the entirety of the work is whether or not historical narratives contain an internal logic.)
* "The Dilemma of Contemporary Anglo-Saxon Philosophy of History." History and Theory. Beiheft vol xxv.4. (1986) pp. 1-36. (Ankersmit discusses the contemporary dilemma between what he calls epistemological and narrativist philosophies of history. Ankersmit provides a good analysis of the debates that have continued within these two "traditions".)
Ankersmit, F.R. and Kelner, Hans. ed.
(1995) A New Philosophy of History. Chicago; University of Chicago Press.(A plea for a postmodernist conception of the philosophy of history. Based more so on the recent debates over the nature of historical narratives and the creative or imaginative aspects of philosophizing about history rather than the old epistemological questions such as what constitutes a "proper" historical explanation and whether or not historians are ever capable of being objective.)
Appleby, J., Hunt, L., and Jacob, M.
(1994) Telling the Truth about History. New York; WW Norton & Co. (An interesting defense of history which attempts to steer a middle course between naive positivist and nihilistic postmodernist accounts by drawing upon the pragmatic realism of Hilary Putnam.)
Aron, Raymond
(1961) Introduction to the Philosophy of History: An Essay on the Limits of Historical Objectivity. trans. George J. Irwin. London; Weidenfeld and Nicholson. (Original publishing in 1938 in French) (A lucid and insightful introduction to matters of history and theory. Aron examines past conceptions of history, the role of historical understanding for human development, historical determinism and causal thought, as well as matters pertaining to history and truth.)
Attridge, D., Bennington, G., and Young, R.
(1987) Post-structuralism and the Question of History. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. (A collection of essays pertaining to how history has dealt with criticisms and conjectures from the philosophical movement popularly known as post- structuralism. What the authors appear to support is a new type of history, based on the principles and methods of a post-structuralist school of thought.)
Bahti, Timothy
(1992) Allegories of History: Literary Historiography After Hegel. Baltimore; John Hopkins University Press.
Bajaj, Satish K.
(1998) Recent Trends in Historiography. New Delhi; Mehra Offset Press. (Written as a guide for Indian philosophers of history and historiographers to come together under one recognized system of historical research and writing.)
Bann, Stephen
(1995) Romanticism and the Rise of History. New York; MacMillan.
* "Towards a Critical Historiography: Recent Work in Philosophy." Philosophy 56 (1981) pp. 106-24.
Barnes, Harry Elmer
(1962) A History of Historical Writing. New York; Dover Publications.Benson, Susan Porter, Stephen Brier, Roy Rosenzweig. ed.
(1986) Presenting the Past; Essays on History and the Public. Philadelphia; Temple University. (Essays on American history by politically active historians concerned with histories of women, blacks, peasants, and workers. Associated with the journal Radical History Review, concerned with the presentation of history outside of academe.)
Bentley, Michael, and Morgen, David. ed.
(1997) Companion to Historiography. London; Routledge.( Covers a wide range of topics and periods; contains a good summary article on the philosophy of history by William H. Dray.)
Bentley, Michael
(1999) Modern Historiography: An Introduction. London; Routledge.( A good introductory survey of theories about history from Enlightenment modernism to pluralistic postmodernism.)
Berkhofer, Robert F.
(1995) Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse. Cambridge, Mass; Harvard University Press.
Berlin, Isaiah
(1954) Historical Inevitability. Oxford; Oxford University Press. (Berlin's classic August Comte Memorial Trust Lecture delivered at the London School of Economics and Political Science on May 12, 1953.. Berlin is critical of the ideas of historical inevitability and determinism.)
(1955) Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas. Oxford; Oxford University Press. (A collection of essays dealing with the history of ideas from the field's most notable practitioner..Contains insightful chapters on Giambattista Vico's conception of knowledge and also his ideal of the Enlightenment.)
(1976) Vico and Herder. Oxford; Oxford University Press.
Blackburn, RJ
(*) "The Philosophy of Historiography" in History and Theory. May 2000, vol. 39. 2. pp 263-273. (A good discussion of the philosophical principles of historiographical studies. Emphasis is placed on the actual work carried out by historians and historiographers and the philosophical principles of their respected disciplines.)
Bloch, Marc
(1954) The Historian's Craft. trans. Peter Putnam. Manchester; Manchester University Press. (An interesting historiogrphical work that deals with what historians actually do. Deals with subjects such as historical observation, historical criticism, historical analysis, and historical causation. Bloch never completed the work. What he had completed was published posthumously.)
Botwinick, Aryeh
(1981) Wittgenstein and Historical Understanding. Washington; University Press of America.
Bowersock, G.W.
(1994) Fiction as History: Nero to Julian. Berkeley, University of California Press. (A look at classical mythistory and fictional representation as a basis of historical research and a legitimate focal point for historical scholarship.)
Breisach, Ernst
(1994) Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. University of Chicago Press. (History of historiography. Good discussion of the cyclical and progressive models of history in chapter 13.)
Brunzl, Martin
(1997) Real History: Reflections on Historical Practice. London; Routledge. (Treatment of the objectivity question and challenges from postmodernism, poststructuralism, etc.with attention to actual historical method and practice.)
Buckle, Henry Thomas
(1866) History of Civilization in England. 3rd ed. London; Longmans. ( Buckle relies heavily on the law of large numbers to try and establish a concise history of Britain founded on statistical induction and analysis.)
Burns, Robert
(2000) Philosophies of History: From Enlightenment to Post-Modernity. Oxford; Blackwell.
Burich, Keith R.
* 'Henry Adams, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and the Course of History.' in Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 48, no. 3, 1987, 467-482. (Adams attempt to formulate a unified theory of history with the aid of contemporary thermodynamics and Willard Gibb's Phase Rule of state transition in matter.)
Burke, Kenneth
(1965) Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose. Indianapolis; Bobbs-Merrill. (Discusses the nature of human orientation and motivation. Interestingly enough, when taking into account human actions and how motivations can have histories of their own, Burke comes close to asking if whether or not one can pin down historically recurring human motivations.)
Burke, Peter
(1992) New Perspectives on Historical Writing. Cambridge; Polity Press.
Bury, J.B.
(1920) The Idea of Progress. London; MacMillan and Co.
Butterfield, Herbert
(1969) Man On His Past: A Study of the History of Historical Scholarship. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. (Butterfield illustrates the rise, scope, methods and objectives of the history of historiography. The topics selected give a general outline of the modern historical movement from the mid-eighteenth century to the contributions of Lord Acton in the late nineteenth century.)
(1973) The Whig Interpretation of History. Harmondsworth; Penguin. (Influential study criticizing the historical attitude whereby the past is reconstructed to look like a linear process of progress leading to the future.)
Callinicos, Alex
(1995) Theories and Narratives: Reflections on the Philosophy of History. Durham; Duke University Press.
Campbell, Richard
(1992) Truth and Historicity. Oxford; Clarendon Press.( A history of the various conceptions of truth. Includes an interesting section on Giambattista Vico and what constitutes historical truth.)
Carlyle, Thomas
(1940) On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. London; Everyman's Library. (Exponent of the "Great Man Theory" in history. Accordingly, events that can be considered responsible for changing the course of history, have been caused by the actions of "great men". Contains a brief but interesting look at the concept "revolutionism" and what it spells for the heroes of history.)
Carr, David
(1986) Time, Narrative and History. Bloomington; Indiana University Press.
Carr, EH
(1961) What is History? New York; Random House. (Classic lectures on the nature of history. Carr's position is more subtle than either positivism or postmodernism. Discusses the role of morality and science in history as well as causation in history. Carr is critical of popular views supporting the idea of history as progress.)
Clark, G. Kitson
(1967) The Critical Historian. London; Heinemann.
Collingwood, Robin G.
(1965) Essays in the Philosophy of History. edited with an introduction by William Debbins. Texas; University of Texas Press.
(1946) The Idea of History. Oxford; Oxford University Press.( Possibly the most renowned book ever written in English dealing with the philosophy of history. Provides a history of historiography plus lectures on the method of understanding in history by one of its best known modern proponents.)
Connolly, James M.
(1965) Human History and the Word of God: The Christian Meaning of History in Contemporary Thought. New York; MacMillan.
Croce, Benedetto
(1921) The Theory and History of Historiography. trans. Douglas Ainslie. London; G.G. Harrap and Co.
(1941) History as the Study of Liberty. New York; Norton.
Danto, A.C.
(1968) Analytic Philosophy of History. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. ( A good discussion of some of the major currents of analytic philosophy of history. This is the first attempt to cover the entire field of philosophy of history from the viewpoint of analytical philosophy. Danto is able to discuss highly technical philosophical issues in a lucid and readable way. Danto is critical of the idea that historians are hardly ever capable of producing what are true and objective explanation of the past. Expounds a logico-aesthetic criteria for validating historical narratives.)
(1985) Narrative and Historical Knowledge. New York; Columbia University Press.(Further explanation of Danto's logico-aesthetic criteria for validating historical narratives. Danto discusses the problems faced in trying to relate various conceptions of historical knowledge with the practice of composing historical narratives.)
Derrida, Jacques
(1967) Of Grammatology. Baltimore; The John Hopkins University Press. (Early work wherein the ideas of 'deconstruction', 'logocentrism', and the critique of the supposed 'presence' of meaning are introduced. This is also the source of the controversial phrase "Il n'y a pas d'hors texte,"cf.p.158.)
Diakonov, Igor Mikhailovich
(1999) The Paths of History. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press.
Dilthey, Wilhelm
(1962) Pattern and Meaning in History: Thoughts on History and Society. New York; Harper.
Donagan, Alan and Donagan, Barbara
(1965) Philosophy of History. New York; MacMillan. (An interesting introductory work in the philosophy of history. Includes essays from a variety of historical theorists including Collingwood, Augustine, Butterfield, Descartes, Vico, Hegel, Marx, von Ranke, J.S. Mill, Popper, Dilthey, Hempel and Dray.)
Dray, William H.
(1957) Laws and Explanation in History. Oxford; Oxford University Press. (Dray's criticism of the "covering law model" of historical explanation.)
(1959) "'Explaining 'What' in history." in Theories of History. ed. Patrick Gardiner. pp. 403-8.
(1964) Philosophy of History. Englewood Cliffs N.J.; Prentice Hall. (A short book in the Foundations of Philosophy Series. Concerned largely with analytical problems: e.g. explanation, theory construction and confirmation. Includes an interesting introduction laying down distinguishing features of two ways in which the term "philosophy of history" is used, these being speculative and critical philosophies of history or what Mandelbaum coined as material and formal philosophies of history.)
(1966) Philosophical Analysis and History. New York; Harper & Row. (A collection of essays from notable historical theorists. Includes an interesting essay by Isaiah Berlin on 'scientific history'.
(1980) Perspectives on History. London; Routledge & Kegan Paul. (A brief but insightful work. Dray presents a collection of his own essays that pertain to the philosophy of history, paying particular attention to individual philosophers and their ideas.)
(1989) On History and Philosophers of History. New York; E.J. Brill. (A monograph on the problems typically attended by analytic philosophers of history by one of its best practitioners.)
(1995) History as Re-Enactment: R..G. Collingwood's Idea of History. Oxford; Clarendon Press. (Possibly the most extensive treatment of the R. G. Collingwood's philosophy of history. Dray examines with clarity and lucidity some of the more complex elements of Collingwoodian philosophy of history namely with the idea that in order to properly understand her subject matter, the historian must first come to understand the motives and intentions of individual historical subject. For Collingwood, the key to history lie in understanding human motives and what resulted as a historical event.).
Dukes, Paul
(1996) World Order in History: Russia and the West. London; Routledge.( An interesting study of conceptions of world history in Russia and America.)
Elton, G.R.
(1967) The Practice of History. Sydney, Australia; Sydney University Press. (Elton is a Cambridge historian of formidable erudition and emphatic views whose appreciation of the study and practice of history has produced a work of great importance. Elton discusses topics and concerns in four different sections, these being the purpose, research, writing, and teaching of history.)
Evans, Richard
(1999) In Defense of History. New York; WW Norton.
Fain, Haskell
(1970) Between Philosophy and History: The Resurrection of Speculative Philosophy of History Within the Analytic Tradition. Princeton.
Fay, Brian, Philip Pomper, and Richard T. Vann. eds.
(1998) History and Theory: Contemporary Readings. Malden, MA; Blackwell. (Good collection of papers from recent debates within the journal History and Theory concerning the narrativity of historical writing, gender and identity politics, and postmodern critiques of orthodox historical practices.)
Ferro, Marc
(1984) The Use and Abuse of History, or How the Past is Taught. London; Routledge and Kegan Paul. (Covers the political dimensions of history as it pertains to our understanding of ourselves and other nations, peoples, ethnic groups etc..)
Ferry, Luc
(1992) The System of Philosophies of History. Chicago; Chicago University Press.
Flint, Robert
(1971) The Philosophy of History in France and Germany. Geneve; Slatkine Reprints.
Fogel, Robert William and Elton, G.R.
(1983) Which Road to the Past? Two Views of History. New Haven; Yale University Press.
Foucault, Michel
(1994) The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York; Random House. ( Foucault's uncovering of the conceptual structures and classifications that laid the grounds for the possibility of the human sciences of political economy, biology, and philology in the "classical age" {17th and 18th centuries}. Very Kantian-like project. And despite his protest to the contrary, it is hard to understand why it is not a paradigm example of structuralist theorizing.)
Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, ed.
(1999) Reconstructing History: The Emergence of a new Historical Society. London; Routledge. (The collaborative results of a new society of historians devoted to rational discussion about history from plurality of philosophical perspectives and methodologies.)
Gardiner, Patrick
(1952) The Nature of Historical Explanation. Oxford; Oxford University Press.
(1959) Theories of History. New York; The Free Press. ( Good collection of selections from influential philosophers from French Enlightenment to mid-twentieth century analytic types. Gardiner covers both speculative and analytic topics.)
(1974) The Philosophy of History. London; Oxford University Press.
Gellner, Ernest
(1989) Plough, Sword, and Book: The Structure of Human History. Chicago; Chicago University Press.
Geyl, Pieter
(1955) Use and Abuse of History. New Haven; Yale University Press. (Geyl's 1954 Yale lectures. Traces historically the tension between the revolutionary force of history for invoking social and political change and the manipulation of history by reactionary states to maintain stability.)
(1958) Debates with Historians. New York; Meridian Books.
Gilbert, Felix
(1990) History: Politics or Culture? Reflections on Ranke and Burckhardt. Princeton. (Written with a flavor of politics not uncommon to Gilbert, in this work he tries to grapple with the differences between Ranke as political historian and Burckhardt's cultural history of the Renaissance. A good book for drawing distinctions between different fields of history, namely political and cultural.)
Gorman, Jonathan
(1992) Understanding History: An Introduction to Analytic Philosophy of History. Ottawa; Ottawa University Press. (A good discussion of contemporary themes in analytic philosophy of history. Raises some interesting questions for the age old problems of historical explanation and historical objectivity. Aside from thoughtful philosophical analysis, Gorman paints an interesting historical picture for the philosophy of history.)
Gould, Stephen Jay
(1989) Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. New York; WW Norton. (Gould's argument for the integral role of contingency in natural history. To the extent that historians take cues from natural scientists, this has rather obvious implications for the interpretation of the past.)
Graham, Gordon.
(1997) The Shape of the Past. Oxford; Oxford University Press. (Graham argues that of all possible shapes one could ascribe to the past, the one that appears most plausible is that of progress under the guidance of Providence. What makes Graham's work stand out from other works dealing with metaphysical speculations of history is his attempt to bridge the gap between methods of analytic philosophy (such as a close examination of the 'internal logic' of individuals' arguments and paying particularly close attention to language) and the more speculative theories of history such as Vico's theory of cycles and historical recurrence as well as Augustine's theory of linear historical progress under the guidance of divine Providence.)
(1983) Historical Explanation Reconsidered. Aberdeen.
Grant, George Parkin
(1995) Time as History. Toronto; University of Toronto Press.
Green, Anna
(1999) The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth Century History and Theory. New York; New York University Press.
Grumley, John E.
(1989) History and Totality: Radical Historicism from Hegel to Foucault. London; Routledge.(A study of the concepts 'historicism' and 'totality', from Hegel, through Marx, Dilthey, Weber, Durkheim, Sorel, Lukacs, the Frankfurt School {Horkheimer, Adorno, Habermas}, to Foucault.)
Gruner, Rolf
(1985) Philosophies of History: A Critical Essay. Aldershot, England; Gower Press.
Habermas, Jurgen
(1989) The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historian's Debate. ed. and trans. S.W. Nicholson. Cambridge; Polity Press.
Hamilton, Paul
(1996) Historicism. Routledge. (Written from the standpoint of literary criticism. Good introduction and first chapter; gets bogged down in highly specialized and obscure literary debates after that.)
Handlin, Oscar
(1998) Truth in History: with a new introduction by the author. New Brunswick; N.J.; Transaction Publishers. (A defense of the idea that historical texts are capable of making true knowledge claims about the past, and of standard historical practice against postmodern critics.)
Himmelfarb, Gertrude
(1987) The New History and the Old. Harvard University Press. (A conservative's defense of the positivist ideals of orthodox historiography, e.g. truth, objectivity.)
Hobsbawm, Eric
(1997) On History. New York; The New Press. ( Collection of essays by an important social historian. Lots on Marxism, one or two essays addressing postmodernism.)
Hook, Sydney
(1963) Philosophy and History: Symposium. New York; New York University Press. (Hook records the probing discussions between American historians and philosophers on key problems in the writing and understanding of history.Composed as a result of a Symposium at the New York University Institute of Philosophy, historians and philosophers grappled with questions pertaining to matters of historical narrative and other forms of discourse, as well as the nature of historical objectivity.)
Iggers, Georg
(1983) The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present. Middletown, Conn; Wesleyan University Press.
* 'Historicism: The History and Meaning of the Term,' Journal of the History of Ideas, 56 (1995), pp. 129-51.
(1998) Historiography in the 20th Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge. Wesleyan University Press. (Account of historicism from classical roots to its modern 'postmodern' incarnation.)
Iggers, Georg and Baker, Norman
(1975) New Directions in European Historiography. Connecticut; Middletown Press.
Iggers, Georg and Powell, James M.
(1990) Leopold von Ranke and the Shaping of the Historical Discipline. Syracuse. Syracuse University Press. (Influential work on the professional career of Leopold von Ranke. Explores Ranke as first and foremost a historian of political affairs but more over this text provides us with a good analysis of the influence that Ranke has had on generations of historians, with reference to both followers and critics alike.)
Jenkins, Keith
(1991) Rethinking History. London; Routledge. (History for the postmodern world. Intended as an introductory text for undergraduates. Argues for an 'emancipatory' historical agenda, and against the objectivist idea of getting the story/facts straight.)
(1995) On What is History? From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White. London; Routledge. (A plea for a postmodern approach to history along the lines of Rorty's pragmatism and Hayden White's narrativism.)
(1997) Postmodern History Reader. London; Routledge. (Selection of writings debating the pros and cons of postmodern interpretations of history. There is a lot of postmodern nonsense in the first section; later sections are more constructive.)
(1999) Why History? ethics and postmodernity. London; Routledge. (Jenkins challenges the ideas of universal history as well as ethics from his postmodernist perspective that favors the of narrativism of Hayden White and the pragmatism of Richard Rorty. History, in this sense, has a politically, as well as socially relevant aspect in its interpretation and teaching.)
Kelley, Donald R.
(1991) Versions of History from Antiquity to the Enlightenment. New Haven; Yale University Press.
(1999) Faces of History: Historical Inquiry From Herodotus to Herder. New Haven;Yale University Press.
Kelly, Aileen
(1998) Toward another Shore: Russian Thinkers Between Necessity and Chance. New Haven; Yale University Press. (Essays dealing largely with nineteenth century Russian thinkers-especially Herzen-and their anticipation/relevance to current issues of postmodern 'ironism' and nihilism a la Richard Rorty et al..)
King, Preston
(1983) The History of Ideas: An Introduction to Method. New Jersey; Barnes & Noble.
Kupperman, Joel
* "Precision in History," in Mind 84 (1975). pp. 374-389.
Lamont, William M.
(1998) Historical Controversies and Historians. London; UCL Press.
Lerner, Gerda
(1997) Why History Matters; Life and Thought. Oxford University Press.
Levine, Joseph M.
(1999) The Autonomy of History: Truth and Method From Erasmus to Gibbon. Chicago; Chicago University Press.
Lilla, Mark
(1993) G.B. Vico: The Making of an Anti-Modern. Cambridge; Harvard University Press.
Lloyd, Christopher
(1993) The Structures of History. Oxford; Blackwell.
Loewen, James W.
(1995) Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Text Book Got Wrong. New York; Simon and Schuster.
Loone, Eero
(1992) Soviet Marxism and Analytic Philosophies of History. New York; Verso. (Philosophy of history qua theory of 'historical cognition.' Epistemology and methodology of history from a Soviet Marxist background.)
Lorenz, Chris
* 'Historical knowledge and historical reality; a plea for 'internal realism'". History and Theory. 1994, pp. 297-321. (Invocation of Putnam's pragmatic or 'internal' realist approach in philosophy of science to debates within historiography. Included in History and Theory Reader listed in this bibliography.)
Lowenthal, David
(1985) The Past is a Foreign Country. New York; Cambridge University Press. (A study of present attitudes towards the past.)
Lowith, Karl
(1949) Meaning in History. Chicago; Chicago University Press (Discusses how 'meaning' in history has been conceived by various historical theorists such as Burckhardt, Marx, Hegel, Proudhoun, Comte, Condercet, Turgot, Voltaire, Vico, Bossuet, and Augustine. Includes interesting chapters on the biblical view of history as well as theories of historical progress.)
Mandelbaum, Maurice
(1977) The Anatomy of Historical Knowledge. Baltimore; John Hopkins University Press.
(1984) Philosophy, History, and the Sciences. Baltimore; John Hopkins University Press.
Manuel, Frank Edward
(1965) Shapes of Philosophical History. Stanford, California; Stanford University Press. (Discusses the major metaphors influencing thought over the ages about the historical process and the nature of time as a collective experience: cycles, ladders, wheels, crooked sticks, and linear progress. All the big philosophies of history are covered.)
(1979) Utopian Thought in the Western World. Stanford University Press. (An interesting look at the history of utopian philosophies and whether or not the possibility of ever achieving utopian ends is plausible.)
Margolis, Joseph
(1993) The Flux of History and the Flux of Science. Berkeley; University of California Press. (Attempt to make philosophy properly 'historicized', i.e. sensitive to the lessons of a world in constant flux.)
Martin, Raymond
(1989) The Past Within Us: An Empirical Approach to Philosophy of History. Princeton University Press. (In writing philosophy of history for historians, Martin realizes that there is no grandiose theory of explanation that works for everything. For historical explanation we have to examine how historians actually deal with their subject matter. A good conceptual analysis of actual historical practice, his work transcends both the positivist and humanist perspectives that have polarized 'Anglo-Saxon' Philosophy of History. Martin explores the source of the polarization by diagnosing dominant analytical approaches from 1935-1975. Martin then proposes an empirical approach that examines what makes one historical interpretation better than its competitors.)
Martin, Rex
(1977) Historical Explanation: Re-enactment and Practical Inference. Ithica; Cornell University Press. (Martin, a student of Arthur Danto, discusses the major questions surrounding the history and theory of historical explanations. He takes into account various conceptions of historical explanations such as those of William Dray, Patrick Gardiner but moreover is his logical approach as expressed in a lucid and coherent style much like his mentor Danto.)
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels
(1996) The Communist Manifesto. London; Pheonix Books. (Classical statement of the materialist theory of history.)
(1978) The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd Edition, Robert C. Tucker ed. New York; W.W. Norton & Co. (More statements on historical materialism; cf. the index.)
Marx, Leo, and Bruce Mazlish, eds.
(1998) Progress: Fact or Illusion? University of Michigan Press. (A good collection of essays dealing with various theories of historical progress.)
McCullagh, C. Behan
(1984) Justifying Historical Descriptions. Cambridge University Press. (McCullagh attempts to establish the conditions that warrant belief in the truth of historical descriptions. In a non-technical manner, by drawing on a large number of sources, McCullagh explores various modes of argument and justificatory procedures commonly employed by historians. McCullagh concludes that we may never rule out the possibility of our descriptions not being true, and even in cases where they are not true, for practical purposes, they can ultimately be justified.)
(1998) The Truth of History. London; Routledge. McNeill, William Hardy.
(1986) Mythistory and Other Essays. Chicago; University of Chicago Press. (Deals with fictional accounts of the past as valid historical descriptions. McNeill draws major distinctions between history and fiction but concedes to mythistory as just a claim to academic status as "history proper".)
Megill, Allan
* 'The reception of Foucault by historians.' Journal of the History of Ideas, 1987, vol. 48, pp. 117-141. (Statistical and expository study of citations of Foucault's works.)
Melzer, A.M.; Weinberger, J.; and Zinman, M. Richard
(1995) History and the Idea of Progress. Ithica; Cornell University Press. (A good discussion of theories of progress from within their historical contexts. Questions whether or not history is the progenitor of many progressivist theories.)
Moraze, Charles
(1976) The Logic of History. The Hague; Mouton.
Mortley, Raoul
(1996) The Idea of Universal History from Hellenistic Philosophy to Early Christian Historiography. Lewiston; E. Mellen Press. (A comprehensive investigation of the classical schools of history and their relationship with various theories supporting universal historical principles.)
Munslow, Alun
(1999) Deconstructing History. London; Routledge. (Deals with Foucault, Rorty, and White.)
(2000) The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies. London; Routledge. (A comprehensive guide for anyone interested in the study of history and its theory. Munslow is thorough in giving each historian, philosopher, and various ideas equal consideration.)
Murphey, Murray G.
(1994) Philosophical Foundations of Historical Knowledge. Albany; New York University Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich
(1980) On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life. Transl. P. Preuss, Indianapolis; Hackett Publishing Co. (Nietzsche's essay on the utility and limitations of history in the service of liberating German culture from its contemporary doldrums and servitude to non-German artistic and scientific traditions rooted in the past. Worth reading to see the contrast between Foucault's influential employment of the concept of genealogy.)
Nitecki, Matthew H. and Nitecki, Doris V.
(1992) History and Evolution. Albany; State University of New York Press.
Norling, Bernard
(1970) Timeless Problems in History. Notre Dame; University of Notre Dame Press.
Novick, Peter
(1988) That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. (A history of the history profession in twentieth century America, focused on the foundational idea of objectivity and how it has come under attack. Good discussion of the wider influence of changing attitudes in philosophy of science toward positivism from the middle of the century on.)
O'Brien, Dennis
(1975) Hegel on Reason and History. Chicago; Chicago University Press. (A short but concise analysis of Hegel's work entitled 'Reason in History'.)
Olafson, Frederick A.
(1979) A Dialectic of Action: A Philosophical Interpretation of History and the Humanities. Chicago; Chicago University Press.
Orwell, George
(1987) Nineteen Eighty-Four. Harmondsworth; Penguin. (Stark illustration of the relationship between power, human self-understanding and the relevance of the past for the kind of emancipatory politics emphasized by Nietzsche and Foucault under the heading of genealogy.)
Pompa, Leon
(1990) Human Nature and Historical Knowledge; Hume, Hegel, and Vico. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press.
(1990) Vico: A Study of the New Science. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press.
Pompa, Leon and Dray, William H.
(1981) Substance and Form in History; A Collection of Essays in Philosophy of History. Edinburgh; The University of Edinburgh Press.
Popper, Karl R.
(1961) The Poverty of Historicism. London; Routledge and Kegan Paul. (Along with the following book Popper stirred up an important debate about the nature and limitations of history and the social sciences, in addition to muddying the term 'historicism.' A harsh criticism of Marxism and what the author purports to be its totalitarian roots in Hegel and extending all the way back to Plato.)
(1971) The Open Society and Its Enemies. 2 Volumes. Princeton. (More of the above in greater length and detail.)
(1994) The Myth of the Framework: In Defense of Science and Rationality. London; Routledge. (A collection of Popper's essays from the post war era. Includes an interesting chapter on the meaning of history or what Popper calls his 'pluralist' approach to the philosophy of history. Popper tries to come to grips with three major questions that have been asked again and again in the philosophy of history, these being whether or not there is a plot to history, what, if anything is the use of history, and, what are the methods that should be properly employed by historians.)
Price, David W.
(1999) History Made, History Imagined: Contemporary Literature, Poiesis, and the Past. Urbana; University of Illinois Press. (Deals primarily with literary theory but holds some relevance for those interested in the present state of narrativist theories and principles with regards to history.)
Putnam, Hilary
(1981) Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. (Putnam's statement of his 'internal realism,' the pragmatic position that recognizes the relativity of knowledge claims to conceptual frameworks, and that our understanding of rationality has, and will continue to have, a history. Significant because it articulated an alternative to the naive position that knowledge claims accurately represent reality as it really is independently of mind and language- the position Putnam dubbed 'metaphysical realism'.)
Rawski, Thomas G.
(1996) Economics and the Historian. Berkeley; University of California Press. (Collection of papers discussing what historians can learn from economic theory and how to apply it to their own craft.)
Ricoeur, Paul
(1983) Time and Narrative. trans. Kathleen McLughlin & David Pellauer. Chicago; Chicago University Press. (The work is divided into two parts. The first dealing with the 'circle of narrative' and temporality, and a second dealing with narrative and history. Offers an interesting discussion on the nature of 'historical intentionality'.)
(1984) The Reality of the Historical Past. Milwaukee; Marquette University Press. Roberts, Clayton (1996) The Logic of Historical Explanation. Pennsylvania; Penn State University Press.
Roberts, David D.
(1995) Nothing But History: Reconstruction and Extremity After Metaphysics. Berkeley; University of California Press.
Rorty, Richard
* 'Historicism and Epistemology,' Monist 53, no. 1: 445-582, (Oct. 1977).
(1989) Contingency, Irony and Solidarity. Cambridge University Press. (One of Rorty's most influential books. A collection of essays espousing his postmodern blend of analytic and continental philosophies. Historicist, ironist {i.e., recognizing the contingency and arbitrariness of one's own historically determined convictions}, pragmatic, antifoundationalist {solidarity and consensus are the object of (scientific and moral) inquiry, not the discovery of mind independent facts}, truth not correspondence to facts but a pragmatic matter of empirical utility.)
Rorty, R., J. B. Schneewind, and Quentin Skinner
(1984) Philosophy in History: Essays on the Historiography of Philosophy. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. Rosenberg, John D. (1985) Carlyle and the Burden of History. Cambridge, Mass; Harvard University Press.
Roth, Michael S.
(1988) Knowing and History: Appropriations of Hegel in Twentieth Century France. Ithaca; Cornell University Press.
(1995) The Ironist's Cage: Memory, Trauma, and the Construction of History. New York; Columbia University Press.
Schaf, Adam
(1976) History and Truth. New York; Pergamon Press. (A defense of objectivism and truth in historical explanation.)
Schama, Simon
(1992) Dead Certainties. London; Granta Press. (Postmodern reinterpretations of established historical truths.)
Schmidt, Alfred
(1981) History and Structure: An Essay on Hegelian-Marxist and Structuralist Theories of History. Cambridge; MIT Press.
Schorske, Carl
(1998) Thinking With History. Princeton University Press. (Studies in nineteenth century thought on history.)
Shute, Michael
(1993) The Origins of Lonergan's Notion of the Dialectic of History: A Study of Lonergan's Early Writings on History. Lanham, Md. University Press of America.
Simonton, Dean Keith
(1994) Greatness: Who Makes History and Why? New York; Guilford Press. (A modern conception equal to Carlyle's 'great man theory' of historical progress but focuses more directly on the role of the historian in 'making' history.)
Smith, Bonnie G.
(1998) The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice. Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press. ( "{this book} proposes that the development of modern scientific methodology, epistemology, professional practice, and writing has been closely tied to evolving definitions of masculinity and femininity." p. 1. Feminist critique of the 'noble dream' of historical objectivity.)
Southgate, Beverly
(1996) History: What and Why?: Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Perspectives. New York; Routledge. (Discussion of trends in historiography; an attempt to extract the positive influences of the postmodern attitude, e.g. a willingness to review the foundations of historical research and thinking, a pluralism about historical interpretations.)
Spier, Fred
(1996) The Structure of Big History. Amsterdam University Press. (An attempt to formulate a 'Grand Unified Theory' of world history.) Spitzer, Alan B. (1996) Historical Truth and Lies about the Past: reflections on Dewey, Dreyfus, de Man, & Reagan. Chapel Hill, NC; University of North Carolina Press. (Investigates the role of history and truth in politically driven inquiries focusing on several case studies.)
Stanford, Michael
(1998) An Introduction to the Philosophy of History. Malden, MA; Blackwell. (Useful investigations of the interrelationships between history, philosophy, and the social sciences; argues that we ought to see history as neither science nor fiction but as its own form of ongoing activity. Has a tendency to wander off into unhelpful digressions, attempts to deal with more topics than it probably should. Contains a good bibliography.)
Stern, Fritz
(1956) The Varieties of History. New York; Meridian Books.
Tholfsen, Trygve R.
(1967) Historical Thinking; An Introduction. New York; Harper & Row.
Thompson, E.P.
(1994) Making History: Writings on History and Culture. New York; New Press. (Essays by one of the most influential social historians of the twentieth century, includes essays on historiography and postmodern challenges.)
Toynbee, Arnold
(1960) A Study of History. abridged by D.C. Somervell. 2 vol. London; Oxford University Press. (Classic historical work divided into ten volumes. Toynbee attempts to write the entire history of civilization, including both Western and Eastern histories. Toynbee falls short of his mark but his influence as a historian and researcher are still noted by today's standards in the historical discipline.)
Trompf, G.W.
(1979) The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought: From Antiquity to the Reformation. Berkeley; University of California Press. (Detailed study of early recurrence themes from Polybius, through Biblical tradition up to Machiavelli.)
Van der Dussen, W.J.
(1981) History as Science; The Philosophy of R.G. Collingwood. The Hague. (Controversial work amongst Colligwoodian scholars. Van der Dussen claims that Collingwood's attempts to bridge the gap between history and philosophy have made the study of history more 'scientific' than it was prior to Collingwood's posthumous publication of The Idea of History (1946).)
Veeser, H. Aram
(1989) The New Historicism. London; Routledge.
Wagar, W. Warren ed.
(1969) The Idea of Progress Since the Renaissance. New York; John Wiley & Sons. (An account of the development of historicism as a skeptical response to the optimism of the Enlightenment.)
Walsh, W.H.
(1960) Philosophy of History: An Introduction. New York; Harper & Row. (Brief and classic introduction to speculative and analytic topics current around the middle of the twentieth century. Predates postmodernism.)
Weinstein, Fred
(1990) History and Theory After the Fall: An Essay on Interpretation. Chicago; Chicago University Press.
White, Hayden
(1973) Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe. Baltimore; The John Hopkins University Press. (Influential and controversial study of the literary devices employed by historians in writing their accounts of past events, blurring the lines between history and fiction.)
(1978) Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore; The John Hopkins University Press. (More of the same above.)
(1987) The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation Baltimore; John Hopkins University Press. (White probes the notion of authority in art and literature and examines the problems of 'meaning', its production, distribution, and consumption, in different historical epochs. White concludes that the only meaning history can have is the kind of meaning that a narrative imagination gives to it. The 'secret of the process' in which consciousness invests history with meaning resides in the 'content of the form', in the way our narrative capacities transform the present into a fulfillment of the past from which we would wish to have descended.)
White, Morton Gabriel
(1965) Foundations of Historical Knowledge. New York; Harper & Row. (Deals with issues concerning such things as historical truth and the limits of historical objectivity. Contains an interesting chapter on the role of 'values'and 'value judgements' in history.)
Wilkins, Burleigh Taylor
(1978) Has History Any Meaning? A Critique of Popper's Philosophy of History Ithaca, NY.; Cornell University Press.(Self-explanatory. The only extended treatment of Popper's work in this area.)
Williams, Howard
(1997) Francis Fukuyama and the End of History. Cardiff; University of Wales Press. (A critique of Fukuyama's claims that liberal democracies provide the best of all possible political situations thus bringing Western political history to an end.)
Wilson, Norman J.
(1999) History in Crisis? Recent Directions in Historiography. Upper Saddle River, NJ; Prentice Hall.
Woolf, D. R. ed.
(1998) A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing. 2 Vols. New York; Garland Publishing Company. (An excellent source book on a variety of topics relating to history.)
Yoder, Edwin M.
(1997) The Historical Present: Uses and Abuses of the Past. Jackson, Miss; University of Mississippi Press. (Yoder is a writer for the Washington Post. Essays on American mythology and history. Includes 'Thomas Jefferson as Secular Saint'.)
Young, Robert
(1990) White Mythologies: Writing History and the West. London; Routledge. (Deals with Post-colonial theories of historiography.)
Zinn, Howard
(1970) The Politics of History. Boston; Beacon Press. (Essays on the philosophy of history, the relationship between knowledge and power, and social activism. Zinn considers objectivity to be an unattainable ideal {because the past is a continuous infinity of 'events' and historians must select with some bias or another what events to deal with}, and given that, history might as well be written with progressive social and political aims in mind, rather than in such a way as to maintain the inequities and injustices of the status quo.)
(1999) The Future of History: Interviews with David Barsamian .Monroe, Maine; Common Courage Press. (More on Zinn's vision of a socially and politically relevant history profession.)