HOW to Read History

As you read history, you’ll ask yourself the classic detective (and journalist) questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? At the first level of inquiry, ask these questions about the story the writer tells: Who is this history about? What happened to them? When does it take place, and where? Why are the characters of this history able to rise above their challenges? Or why do they fail? On the second level of inquiry, you’ll scrutinize the historian’s argument: What proof does (he) offer? How does (he) defend (his) assertions? What historical evident does (he) use? Finally, on your third level of inquiry, ask: What does this historian tell us about human existence? How does the history explain who men and women are, and what place they are to take in the world?
Excerpted from The Well-Educated Mind by S. Wise Bauer

Analyzing a Nonfiction Work

Start with STYLE: What kind of writing and why? How would you describe the style of this work? Is the writing such that you quickly gain interest in and knowledge of this subject?

Move to the NARRATOR AND POINT OF VIEW: Who’s speaking? How would you describe the author’s attitude toward his subject?

Focus on the CHARACTERS: Who’s involved? In addition to considering how the author portrays his main subjects, you can also look at the way the author chooses to characterize the supporting members of his historical cast. Who are the heroes or the villains of the work?

Check out the PLOT: What happens in what order? What are the main points of conflict, barriers, or obstacles for the subjects of this work? Does the author do a good job of choosing and sorting real events in order to create an interesting account or story?

Thing about the SETTING: Where and when does it happen? Is the author successful in making this particular time and place come alive for the reader? What does the author think is most important or significant for you to know about the social world and cultural climate that these people lived in?

Don’t forget THEMES: What’s the big idea (or ideas)? Why did the author choose to write about this time or these people? What did (he) hope to discover and illustrate about the subject? Can you identify a major theme or purpose of this work? What does the author hope to prove about the subject? What did you find most meaningful or surprising about this subject/ What interesting facts or perspectives will you take away from this book?
Excerpted from Good Books Lately by Ellen Moore

WHY Read History?

History functions to satisfy a variety of human needs:

1. History as memory and as a source of personal identity. As memory, it keeps alive the experiences, deeds, and ideas of people of the past. By locating each individual life as a link between generations and by allowing us to transform the dead into heroes and role models for emulation, history connects past and future and becomes a source of personal identity.

2. History as collective immortality. By rooting human beings on a continuum of the human enterprise, history provides each man and woman with a sense of immortality through the creation of a structure in the mind, which extends human life beyond its span.

3. History as cultural tradition. A shared body of ideas, values and experiences, which has a coherent shape, becomes a cultural tradition, be it national, ethnic, religious or racial. Such a “symbolic universe” unites diverse groups. It also legitimates those holding power, by rooting its source in a distant past.

4. History as explanation. Through an ordering of the past into some larger connectedness and pattern, historical events become “illustrations” of philosophies and of broader interpretative frameworks. Depending on the system of thought represented, the past becomes evidence, model, contrast to the present, symbol or challenge.