Thinking about History

There is pleasure to be had in reading a good work of history for yourself, in underlining those particular phrases, evidences, and insights that speak to you. Deciphering difficult scholarship can be satisfying, even exciting. I enjoy going back to books and articles I read in graduate school and rereading favorite useful parts: Karl Marx on value, E. P. Thompson on class consciousness, Michel Foucault on objects of discourse, Natalie Davis on the arts of the marginalized. I know how each one mattered to my work. I was therefore skeptical when I began reading Sarah Maza's Thinking about History, a survey, intended for the classroom, of the development of historical writing and thinking. I wondered if students, fresh to the field, could understand the meaning or significance of this historical scholarship boiled down into one text. However, as I continued reading, I became increasingly grateful that someone this thoughtful and skilled had chosen to research and write this book

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