The Historian's Toolbox: A Student's Guide to the Theory and Craft of History, 5th Edition

Now in its fifth edition, The Historian’s Toolbox is designed to help students become skilled in the intellectual process and craft of history, offering an overview of the field and techniques for reading and writing about history. The fifth edition expands the selection of tools available to students entering the workshop of history. These include new chapters on digital history, Indigenous peoples, and gender history and new sections on the Voynich manuscript, LGBTQ+ history, slavery, and a historian who survived the war in Ukraine. The book has been fully updated to address the possibilities and limits of computerized approaches to doing history, with careful attention paid to the benefits and controversies of artificial intelligence, chatbots, and the internet. It demonstrates the continuing relevance of history in a cacophonous world of misinformation and censorship, emphasizing critical thinking, facts, and evidence as valuable means of understanding the past and shaping the future. Engaging and accessible, this volume is ideal for undergraduate courses in historiography and historical methods. "The Historian's Toolbox introduces students to the theory, craft, and methods of history and equips them with a series of tools to research and understand the past. Written in an engaging and entertaining style, and filled with fascinating examples, this best-selling "how to" book opens up an exciting world behind historical research and writing. This fourth edition expands the repertory of tools and techniques available to students entering the workshop of history. These include materials on the Kennedy assassination, the litigation of Van Gogh's "Night Café", local town histories, contemporary history, Twitter, and the contemplation of the end of history as well as the Sixth Extinction in a new epilogue. The book demonstrates the relevance and expanding possibilities of the study of history in our cacophonous information age of tweetstorms and fake news; it emphasises the increasing value of critical thinking, facts and evidence in the face of political lies and conspiracy theories. Material added to the fourth edition will resonate with a new generation of computer-literate readers in the face of climate change. The Historian's Toolbox continues to be a seminal text for supporting students throughout their study of history and an accessible teaching tool for instructors."-- Provided by publisher Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Illustrations, Figures, and Tables History as Fun Part 1 The Craft of History 1 The Past 2 Story 3 History 4 Metahistory 5 Antihistory 6 The Present 7 The Future Part 2 The Tools of History 8 Doing History 9 Sources and Evidence 10 Credit and Acknowledgment 11 Narrative and Explanation 12 Interpretation 13 Speculation Part 3 The Relevance of History 14 Everyday History 15 Oral History 16 Material Culture 17 Public History 18 Event Analysis 19 Digital History 20 Gender History 21 Indigenous Peoples 22 Epilogue: The End of History? Glossary Bibliography Index