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caitcoy's review against another edition
1.0
Thank God that's over. Hands down my least favorite book about writing history! Marwick is arrogant, elitist and just plain irritating for nearly 300 pages. He supplies good information about the different aims of historians and schools of thought but in such a condescending manner towards those who disagree with him that at points I wanted to strangle him. And most irritatingly, he believes that history is only something that can be considered by professional historians, which is completely contrary to getting people interested in the subject in the first place! If all I read about history were the texts published by professional historians (at least half of whom can be incredibly boring), I never would have wanted to study it at all. You need popular histories to get people interested and then maybe they'll pursue the more academic sources. It just doesn't make sense to call people like Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin not real historians just because their audience is the general public rather than academia. Worth reading only if you're a history student and would like to learn information about the discipline. I hated every second of reading it.
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