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

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.

Table of Contents:
Contents Illustrations and Tables History as Fun Part I. The Craft of History 1. The Past 2. Story 3. History 4. Metahistory 5. Antihistory 6. The Present 7. The Future Part II. The Tools of History 8. Doing History: An Overview 8.1 Choosing a Good Paper Topic 8.2 Reading History 8.3 Taking Notes 8.4 How to Write a Good History Paper 9. Sources and Evidence 9.1 Primary and Secondary Sources Primary Source: The Wannsee Protocol (1942) Secondary Source: Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (2000) Summary 9.2 Documents A Revolutionary War Ancestor’s Pension Application (1832) 9.3 Maps Sebastian Munster’s Map of the Americas, c. 1540 9.4 Artifacts Digging Ancient Moscow 9.5 Images Sharpshooter’s Home or Photographer’s Studio? 9.6 Cliometrics: Using Statistics to Prove a Point The Black Population of Colonial America 9.7 Genetic Evidence Welsh and Basques, Relatively Speaking Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings—What’s My Line? 10. Credit and Acknowledgment 10.1 Notes 10.2 Bibliography Styling Your Bibliography Types of Bibliographies A Selective, Annotated Bibliography 10.3 Acknowledging Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism 10.4 Professional Plagiarism: How Not to Do History 11. Narrative and Explanation 11.1 The Language of the Historian Paul Revere and the New England Village 11.2 Chronology The Life of Margaret Fuller 11.3 Narrative Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg 11.4 Argument "‘Little Women’ Who Helped Make This Great War" 11.5 Causation 11.6 The Reasons Why Explaining the Mann Gulch Fire of August 5, 1949 12. Interpretation 12.1 Reviewing History Bellesiles’s Arming America 12.2 Historical Revision The Denmark Vesey Slave Conspiracy (1822) 12.3 Historiography World War II 12.4 Women’s History: The Leo Frank Case 13. Speculation 13.1 Historical Speculation Will the Real Martin Guerre Please Get an Identity? 13.2 History as Fiction The Soldier Who Never Was 13.3 Conspiracies Who Really Really Killed Lincoln? 13.4 Forgeries and Facsimiles Is a Document Genuine? Is a Collection of Documents Authentic? How Can Forgeries Influence History? Is a Newly Discovered Collection by a Well-Known Author Authentic? If It Is a Forgery, Who Is the Forger? 13.5 Fiction as History 13.6 Film as History: Fact or Fiction? Films Can Help the Historian Understand the Past Films Can Hinder Our Understanding of the Historical Past Part III. The Relevance of History 14. Everyday History 14.1 Studying Ordinary People The Burgermeister’s Daughter 14.2 Everyone’s a Historian 14.3 Local History. A Tale of Two Towns 15. Oral History 15.1 The Perils of Memory 15.2 Interviewees and Interviewers The WPA Slave Narratives 15.3 Techniques of Oral History 16. Material Culture 16.1 Spirits in the Material World Richard Bushman and The Refinement of America 16.2 Studying Material Culture 16.3 Provenance and Ownership. Tracing Stolen Art 17. Public History 17.1 History Beyond the Ivory Tower 17.2 History and the Public The Enola Gay Controversy 18. Event Analysis 18.1 History in Real Time The Iraq War: Munich, Mukden, or Mexico? 19. New Tools: GIS and CSI 19.1 Spatial History: Geographic Information Systems 19.2 Killer App: Crime Scene Investigation Forensics 20. History on the Internet 20.1 Using the Internet: Promises and Pitfalls 20.2 Wikipedia and "Wikiality" 20.3 Blogging the Past (and Present) 21. TMI: Too Much Information 21.1 History as Information 21.2 Hacking History: The Deluge of WikiLeaks 21.3 Private Parts: The Intrusion of History 21.4 Twitter 22. Epilogue: The End of History? Glossary Selected Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Robert C. Williams is Vail Professor of History Emeritus at Davidson College. He has taught Russian, European and American history at Williams and Bates Colleges and at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Russian Art and American Money (1980), nominated by Harvard University Press for the Pulitzer Prize.

Review :
"The Historian's Toolbox is a quintessential guide that needs to be on the desk of every undergraduate student of history. The fourth edition incorporates new debates and tools for Digital Humanities." Dr. Anjana Singh, Asst. Professor in Early Modern History, Department of History; University of Groningen, The Netherlands "The Historian's Toolbox is a quintessential guide that needs to be on the desk of every undergraduate student of history. The fourth edition incorporates new debates and tools for Digital Humanities." Dr. Anjana Singh, Asst. Professor in Early Modern History, Department of History; University of Groningen, The Netherlands