What Daniel Boorstin did for science in The DiscoverERs, Timothy Ferris for cosmology in Coming of Age in the Milky Way, and Robert Heilbroner for economics in The Worldly Philosophers, Colin Wells does for history in A BRIEF HISTORY OF HISTORY a readable 90,000-word intellectual history in its most engaging and accessible form. The book is a biography of history as a living idea, linking together lively, evocative sketches of the great historians with a few bold brushstrokes summarizing their most important works. We learn how the great historians changed our understanding of history, how history itself moved forward over time as a particular way of approaching the past, and why "history" is a startlingly fluid concept, with an evolutionary course—a story, that is—all its own. Wells tells that story with zest and humor, but also with the intellectual seriousness that educated and intelligent readers demand.
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