A01=James M. Banner
Ancient History
Antiquity
Author_James M. Banner
Category=NHAH
Civil War
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
French Revolution
Global studies
Historians
Interpretation
Scholars
Social Studies
Story
Subjective
Thucydides
World History
Product details
- ISBN 9780300283273
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 23 Sep 2025
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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An experienced, multi-faceted historian shows how revisionist history is at the heart of creating historical knowledge
“A rallying cry in favor of historians who, revisiting past subjects, change their minds. . . . Rewarding reading.”—Kirkus Reviews
“A wise, erudite, and, perhaps most important, a clearly written examination of the ways historians go about their craft of interpreting and reinterpreting the past.”—Gordon S. Wood, Brown University
History is not, and has never been, inert, certain, merely factual, and beyond reinterpretation. Taking readers from Thucydides to the origin of the French Revolution to the Civil War and beyond, James M. Banner, Jr., explores what historians do and why they do it.
Banner shows why historical knowledge is unlikely ever to be unchanging, why history as a branch of knowledge is always a search for meaning and a constant source of argument, and why history is so essential to individuals’ awareness of their location in the world and to every group and nation’s sense of identity and destiny. He explains why all historians are revisionists while they seek to more fully understand the past, and how they always bring their distinct minds, dispositions, perspectives, and purposes to bear on the subjects they study.
“A rallying cry in favor of historians who, revisiting past subjects, change their minds. . . . Rewarding reading.”—Kirkus Reviews
“A wise, erudite, and, perhaps most important, a clearly written examination of the ways historians go about their craft of interpreting and reinterpreting the past.”—Gordon S. Wood, Brown University
History is not, and has never been, inert, certain, merely factual, and beyond reinterpretation. Taking readers from Thucydides to the origin of the French Revolution to the Civil War and beyond, James M. Banner, Jr., explores what historians do and why they do it.
Banner shows why historical knowledge is unlikely ever to be unchanging, why history as a branch of knowledge is always a search for meaning and a constant source of argument, and why history is so essential to individuals’ awareness of their location in the world and to every group and nation’s sense of identity and destiny. He explains why all historians are revisionists while they seek to more fully understand the past, and how they always bring their distinct minds, dispositions, perspectives, and purposes to bear on the subjects they study.
James M. Banner, Jr., a historian of early American politics, historical thought, and the discipline of history, is the author of many books, including The Elements of Teaching, and is the editor of Presidential Misconduct: From George Washington to Today. He lives in Washington, D.C.
