John H. Arnold

A good and well written introduction to what history means, how it's used, how it's done. You could always argue for X thing to be included but I think he covers most things you could expect to. Most chapters he focuses on a particular event from history and uses it to discuss a different aspect of how we understand history, how historical analysis is done, the struggle of approaching something like "the truth". Each of these events are interesting in themselves - an early 1300s murder to avoid someone exposing "heretics" to the inquisition, the story of a puritan preacher who went from England to America and back again and the family he left behind...

Often the book focuses more on asking questions than giving answers, but that's kind of the point - it's great for questioning the assumptions people might come into history with and pointing out how difficult it is to provide a definite understanding of the past.… (more)