From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods

From Reliable Sources is the sort of dull-but-worthy book that final year history undergraduates or first year history graduate students should probably read at some point. It's a basic introduction to problems of historical methodology, the development of history as an academic field, important historians, and so on. I didn't find it very engaging—the prose is a little leaden, it's a tad dated (it was published in 2001), there's nothing here that was particularly new to me, and (while perhaps unsurprisingly, given that it was written by two medievalists) people who work in subaltern studies fields will probably be dissatisfied with it (awful lot of dead white guy history/historians). People who are more at the beginning of their studies might find it more useful, however, though I think it would be more useful for them if paired with discussion about it. Such a work, after all, is more abstract/theoretical than about how historians work on a practical level—the "process" they describe here for how historians work (gather sources, decide on the reliability of each source, construct narrative from there) is surely more the ideal than how I've ever observed someone work. ( )

The first three chapters are great. They discuss how to analyze sources. Chapter four is a bit off track, as they delve into philosophy of language. Chapter 5 is decent, as it tends back toward practical matters. The extensive bibliography is excellent.

This is written for historians to do history. If you are seeking a leisure read, move on. ( )