The Varieties of History: From Voltaire to the Present - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 039471962X ISBN 13: 9780394719627

Publisher: Vintage, 1973

Synopsis

From Voltaire to Marx and Engels, this anthology explores history from the viewpoint of historians. The text includes influential works such as “The New Philosophical History” by Voltaire, “History as Biography” by Thomas Carlyle, and “A New Economic History” by R. W. Fogel.

"I cannot imagine a more engaging and instructive introduction to the fascinations of historical writing than Fritz Stern's classic The Varieties of History."—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., City University of New York

"This book contains not only an excellent selection of passages which characterize the ideas and the work of leading historians from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, but the book in its entirety provides a stimulating survey of the entire development of modern historiography."—Felix Gilbert, The Institute for Advanced Study

"It is by all odds the best kind of introduction to the study and, what is more, to the enjoyment, of history."—Crane Brinton

About this title

From the Back Cover:

This is a book by historians about history, personal reflections on an ancient but ever varying discipline. As the present work will show, modern historians have written in a variety of genres, but the multiplicity of style cannot obscure the two basic tendencies which have affected all modern historians: the transformation of history into an academic discipline and society's growing demand for history.

About the Author:

A recognized authority on modern Europe, Fritz Stern (1938–2016) was a Seth Low Professor of History and former provost at Columbia University. He held three degrees from Columbia, where he taught for over four decades. He also taught at Cornell, Yale, the Free University of Berlin, and the University of Konstanz in West Germany, and as Élie Halévy Professor at the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques in Paris. He received a DLitt from Oxford in 1985 and the Leopold-Lucas Prize from the Evangelical-Theological Faculty of the University of Tübingen in 1984. His works include The Varieties of History: From Voltaire to the Present; Dreams and Delusions: National Socialism in the Drama of the German Past; Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire, which was nominated for a National Book Award; The Politics of Cultural Despair; and The Failure of Illiberalism.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1973
• ISBN 10: 039471962X
• ISBN 13: 9780394719627
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 544
• Editor: Stern Fritz