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Surveying 2,500 years of historians

By | Sunday, August 3, 2008

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EPICS, CHRONICLES, ROMANCES AND INQUIRIES FROM HERODOTUS AND THUCYDIDES TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Knopf, $35, 517 pages

REVIEWED BY Stephen Goode

John Burrow's "A History of Histories" surveys a big chunk of history — 2,500 years — beginning with the Ancient Greek, Herodotus, "the father of history," onward to such innovative 20th-century figures as Fernand Braudel, Frances Yates and Thomas Kuhn.

It's a daunting task, but it's one that Mr. Burrow, who is professor of European Thought at Oxford University, handles with clarity and admirable dexterity.

Mr. Burrow focuses on the major historians of Europe and the United States. There's nothing in "A History of Histories" about Asian, Arab, African or South American historians.

But he knows the many works and the biographies of the men and women he writes about thoroughly, and readers will admire his graceful prose and appreciate his erudition.

The author sees one overriding goal that unites historians throughout the centuries: "To all of them the past mattered: it was worth investigating and recording and keeping alive for future generations," he writes.

Where they differ is in approach to history and above all in the lessons derived from it: A Thomas Carlyle (a Scot) or Jules Michelet (Frenchman), for example, can view the French Revolution as a great era bringing magnificent benefits to mankind, while a Hippolyte Taine (another Frenchman) sees it as a sickness from when France and Europe never truly recovered.