The Modern Historiography Reader

In this new edition, Adam Budd guides readers through two centuries of developments in the ways historians have thought, taught, researched, and written about the past. Fully updated with introductory essays on the enduring importance of German historicism, the ways historians have thought about violence, trauma, race-based slavery, nationalism, and genocide; why Marxism, postcolonial studies, and indigenous ways of seeing have shaped historical scholarship; how and when climate change emerged as a historical matter, and recent historical thinking about AI, archives, and public memory. The volume now also includes a new and annotated translation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” (1874) and the first translation of Walter Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History” (1940) to appear in 60 years.

The Modern Historiography Reader brings together more than 75 historical documents that illustrate historical developments, each of them annotated and including lists of Further Reading. With a Glossary and Index, this is one of the most thorough single books of Western historical writing.