Writing History: A Guide for Students

by William Kelleher Storey

Book Overview

Bringing together practical methods from both history and composition, Writing History, Fourth Edition, provides a wealth of tips and advice to help students research and write essays for history classes. The book covers all aspects of writing about history, including finding and researching topics, interpreting source materials, drawing inferences from sources, and constructing arguments. It concludes with three chapters that discuss writing effective...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0199830045
• ISBN13: 9780199830046
• Release Date: February 2012
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 7.8" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

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this book is very helpful for not only writing history papers but also other general types of papers. Strongly recommend!

Succinct and Fun

For those of you who don't want to suffer from grammar overload, I highly recommend this volume. The book is fairly short, but each chapter offers the basic information needed to write your history paper. Additionally, Storey's writing style is light, and in some places quite humorous -- which is a pleasant bonus in a writing manual. Each chapter is broken down into nice, small sections that can be read in a few minutes each. This is great if you have a lot of small breaks during the day instead of one large chunk of study time. The book is not a chore to read. Storey's book is an excellent first book for someone who wants to write about history, although it does not get very deep into the subject. For theories of historiography you'll need to look at other books. Also, this book won't replace your grammar manual or stylebook. Think of it as your first stop.

Simple intro

This book is fairly short (111 pgs with not a lot of print on them,) but is a great introduction to writing for history classes. It doesn't go into lots of detail, it is very basic. It was helpful in figuring out "What on earth should I write about?" "How do I make a thesis?" all the way to finishing a history paper.

Ideal for advanced undergraduate students of history

Storey, developed this text for a writing program at Harvard. A historian by training, Storey does an excellent job of describing basic and advanced research and writing techniques. His text is succinct and lively, filled with well chosen examples. If you have ever wondered about the difference between a primary and secondary source or how to deal with contradictory evidence, this is the book for you. I assign it in my writing courses.