A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances, and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucy

by J.W. Burrow and John Burrow

Book Overview

This unprecedented book, by one of Britain's leading intellectual historians, describes the intellectual impact that the study and consideration of the past has had in the western world over the past 2500 years, treating the practise of history not as an isolated pursuit but as an aspect of human society and an essential part of the cultural history of Europe and America. It magnificently brings to life the work of historians from the Greeks to the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 014028379X
• ISBN13: 9780140283792
• Release Date: March 2009
• Publisher: Penguin UK
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

What in the world is this false history 😳

Garbage 🗑 not even worth the paper it's written on. Very disappointed 😞

A rare book.

A rare book because it more than rewards the effort of reading. Like all great teachers, Burrow's affection for his subject and its practitioners shines through. His prose can be a little scholarly at times (terms such as "prolix" and "antinomian" can make even a fairly literate reader feel excluded) but that's just nit-picking. Also, the book is a history of *western* histories - not surprising given the author's background; you can only cast your net so wide. It is a breathtaking achievement - an easy, engaging read that makes you want to learn more.

An eccentric smorgasbord of delights

A History of Histories is an idiosyncratic work filled with a kaleidoscope of insights that derive from the author's broad education and lifetime of reading. At his best, Burrow seems like an animated tour guide pointing us to histories that we have never read and never will read: "Bet you've not thought about William Robertson. Well, let me tell you what's important about his History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V (1769). And then Carlyle--how about his peculiar and evocative prose style?" What one should not expect of Burrow is a systematic study of great historians or western historiography. Everyone can choose his own favorite examples of imbalance. Ancient Greek historians get more space than the entire twentieth century. Geoffrey of Monmouth, the egregious medieval mythmaker, gets five and a half pages to Leopold von Ranke's three at best. Among Americans, William Hickling Prescott gets eight pages, Charles Beard a sentence and a half. I also think Burrow has slighted the influence of the religion of the Bible in the development of western historiography. He postpones consideration of the Book itself until after all the ancients, although anyone guessing at the dates of composition for what Herbert Butterfield calls the "Court History of David" (I & II Samuel) would probably place it several centuries before Herodotus and would also probably, like Butterfield, credit it with "an amazing impartiality and independence." Then too, much of the praise bestowed on Enlightenment historians should, in my opinion, be attributed to the outworking of the Reformation. Likewise, nineteenth-century historicists reflect the soft glow of German pietism at their backs. In the end, A History of Histories is still the finest piece of historigraphical literature written for the educated general reader in our generation. It's an eccentric smorgasbord of delights. If there are too many kinds of artichokes, there is still plenty of steak on the table.

A truly monumental work

I have always been a history nut, reading history after history throughout my life. And one cannot read these histories without realizing that there is a difference between the way the historians viewed their subjects, and how they went about recording history. In this fascinating book, author and noted historian, John Burrow, examines the historians, putting them within their historic framework, and showing how they viewed their subjects. As each historian is unveiled - Herodotus, Thucydides, Zenophon, and on and on - you get an understanding of what the historian was saying and how he understood his subject. Even more, you get to see how the understanding of "history" has changed throughout the unfolding of Western society. Overall, I found this to be a thoroughly absorbing book. I really enjoy history, and now I see how a "history" is part of history, with a context to it. If you enjoy reading non-modern histories, you really should read this book. I does a great job of taking you behind the words, to what the author was truly saying and why. I think that this is a truly monumental work, one that is sure to please any history buff.

Fascinating Erudition

A book which surveys the history of historical writing might not sound too appealing, but you'd be wrong to pass this jewel by just because of the somewhat forbidding title. A History of Histories is a treasure trove of fascinating information about the craft of historiography, from its early practitioners in Greece down to the late twentieh century's newest interpretations. Most people have heard of Herodotus and Thucydides, and they may have run across references to Livy, Tacitus, and William of Monmouth from time to time. John Burrow describes these historians, traces their contexts, and explains their interpretations and points of view along with many lesser-known but important historians like Xenophon, Gregory of Tours, and Michelet. The work is massive, nearly 500 pages, but it rarely bogs down or becomes tedious because Burrow has the gift of describing even the most complex interpretations succinctly. Even more important, he isn't afraid to make a few sardonic asides here and there, lessening the air of gravity which threatens to prevail at times. I chuckled over his comments on the family tree of the Herodians and his explanation for the names of his old school's houses. A History of Histories is to be read and savored both for its wealth of knowledge and for its well crafted language.

A most enjoyable survey

This splendid book gives us the flavour of Western historians from the Ancient Greeks to the Twentieth Century. Burrow does not neglect the Philosophy of History, but that is not his main concern: rather does he bring out the personality of the historians through their writings and how their books have been shaped by their own times and their own experiences. Plentiful quotations from their works illustrate the book; they are beautifully chosen, and a pleasure to read in themselves. Burrow is very good on tracing the influence of the historians of Greece and Rome on the historians of much later centuries - of Tacitus on Gibbon, to give just one example. About a third of the book is rightly devoted to Antiquity. We are reminded how deservedly Antiquity is regarded, in this field also, as one of the cradles of European thought, and how extraordinarily relevant the experiences of the Ancient World are to our own. This was known among the educated classes in the days when Herodotus and Thucydides, Livy and Tacitus were a staple of education: they found these classics an inexhaustible fund of enlightenment and understanding of political processes, providing models as well as warnings Certainly there is a sad falling off after the classical period. The early Christian historians abandoned the aim of being impartial, relentlessly promoted orthodox Christianity and implacably blackened the unorthodox. Where historians like Eusebius and Bede did have a philosophy to guide them, they traced what they saw as God's plan in history; but a lesser man, like the 6th century Bishop Gregory of Tours, to whom Burrow devotes an amusing chapter (he calls him `Trollope with bloodshed'), seems to show, in his mistitled History of the Franks, nothing at all of what we could recognize as philosophical reflections - though with or without such reflections, we can of course learn much about the ways of life and preoccupations that he depicts. The same is broadly true of the medieval annals and chronicles to which Burrow devotes a solid chunk of his book. In Froissart's Chronicles we learn much about the code of chivalry between knights (though the code does not apply to the treatment of commoners). Burrow extracts some vivid or entertaining material from them, and he is often a witty and entertaining commentator himself. He remarks that we should not expect narrative or thematic connections in annals: `we should think instead of a newspaper whose time scale is the year, not the day. We are ourselves unperturbed by the most diverse news stories appearing in juxtaposition, ...' The scurrilous 13th century chronicler Matthew Paris reminds Burrow `of a modern tabloid editor: disrespectful, populist, xenophobic, and anti-intellectual', and an attempt to bowdlerize him would be `like trying to de-vein Gorgonzola'. However, Renaissance historians, like Bruni, Machiavelli and Guiccardini, modelled themselves once again on the histories of ancient Rome and Gree