O. L. Davis, Jr. is Catherine Mae Parker Centennial Professor of Curriculum and Instruction. Elizabeth Anne Yeager is associate professor of social studies education at the University of Florida. Stuart J. Foster is associate professor of social science education at the University of Georgia.

Davis, Yeager, and Foster's volume will contribute to the current sea-change in approaches to history education. As schools move from teaching history as 'the facts,' to promoting more complex thinking about the past, the concept of 'historical empathy' will figure centrally in curriculum, instruction, and research. Historical Empathy and Perspective Taking in the Social Studies offers a diverse set of studies on how young people—and their teachers—make sense of the past, from Lee and Ashby's ground-breaking British research to a range of studies by both established and newer American researchers.

• Chapter 1 Introduction : In Pursuit of Historical EmpathyChapter 2 The Role of Empathy in the Development of Historical UnderstandingChapter 3 Empathy, Perspective Taking, and Rational UnderstandingChapter 4 From Empathic Regard to Self-Understanding: Im/Positionality, Empathy, and Historic ContextualizationChapter 5 Crossing the Empty Spaces: Perspective-Taking in New Zealand Adolescents' Understanding of National HistoryChapter 6 Teaching and Learning Multiple Perspectives on the Use of the Atomic Bomb: Historical Empathy in the Secondary ClassroomChapter 7 Perspectives and Elementary Social Studies: Practice and PromiseChapter 8 The Holocaust and Historical Empathy: The Politics of UnderstandingChapter 9 Historical Empathy in Theory and Practice: Some Final Thoughts