Michael Bentley is Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews. He has written extensively on Modern British History and teaches courses in historiography and historical theory.

'Can one survey all historical writing, past and present, in a volume of 1,000 pages? Can one get 40 contributors all to write with clarity and concision? Can one not only recount the great debates over the merits of the scholarship of, say, Christopher Hill or Edward Said, but also trace the development of the philosophy of history? The answer to all these questions is yes, thanks to the consumate skill of Bentley and his colleagues. Historians, whatever their specialities, can read this book with profit and pleasure.' - Choice'This collection of 40 essays will provide both librarians and their patrons with an invaluable insight into the nature and practice of history at the end of the millenium. The long, discursive essays will fill an important gap for a wide range of public and academic librarians, historians, graduate students and senior undergraduates.' - Feliciter (Magazine of Canadian Library Association)'General readers with serious historical interests will find much to fascinate them in this book ... a rich and multifarious volume.' - Sunday Telegraph'A valuable addition to academic reference collections.' - Library Journal'This book's strength is that it contains essays on periods as far distant as ancient Greece and China, and as recent as post-1945 America ... [and] features a whole host of references at the end of each essay.' - Library Association Record'Not only are the essays wide ranging in themselves, offering insights into contemporary historiography, not readily found within hard covers ... they are also extremely well documented and equipped with very respectable bibliographies. No large general reference library or special collection supporting history-oriented undergraduate and postgraduate courses or research, can afford to pass by this substantial volume.' - Reference Reviews'Make no mistake this book is phenomenally ambitious ... Michael Bentley and all his contributors must be applauded warmly for their most extensive efforts.' - History Review

• Introduction: The Project of Historiography Section 1: Beginnings - East and West Introduction 1.1 Asian Historiography: Two Traditions 1.2 Historiography and Greek Self-Definition .3 Re-Reading the Roman Historians 1.4 The Historiography of Rural Labour 1.5 Towards Late-Antiquity Section 2: The Medieval World Introduction 2.1 The Historiography of the Medieval State 2.2 Saladin and the Third Crusade 2.3 Family and Household 2.4 The Medieval Nobility 2.5 Armies and Warfare 2.6 Popular Religion Section 3: Early-Modern Historiography Introduction 3.1 The Idea of Early Modern History 3.2 The Scientific Revolution 3.3 Intellectual History 3.4 The English Reformation 3.5 Popular Culture in the Early-Modern West 3.6 Revisionism in Britain Section 4: Reflecting on the Modern Age Introduction I: Revolution and Ideology 4.1 The French Revolution 4.2 The Soviet Revolution 4.3 National Socialism in Germany 4.4 Fascism and Beyond in Italy 4.5 Orientalism London: II Area Studies 4.6 China 4.7 Japan 4.8 India 4.9 Africa 4.10 North America 4.11 Latin America Section 5: Contexts for the Writing of History I: Hinterlands 5.1 History and Philosophy 5.2 History and Anthropology 5.3 History and Archaeology 5.4 History of Art II: Approaches 5.5 The Historical Narrative 5.6 The Annales School 5.7 Marxist Historiography 5.8 Women in Historiography 5.9 Comparative World History 5.10 Archives and Technology