What is history and why should we study it? Is there such a thing as historical truth? Is history a science? One of the most accomplished historians at work today, John Lewis Gaddis, answers these and other questions in this short, witty, and humane book. The Landscape of History provides a searching look at the historian's craft, as well as a strong argument for why a historical consciousness should matter to us today. Gaddis points out that while the historical method is more sophisticated than most historians realize, it doesn't require unintelligible prose to explain.
This brilliant study -- Gaddis' fifth book on the Cold War -- provides an exhaustive and ever-quizzical approach to the early years of the superpower conflict. Gaddis has a knack for asking large and interesting questions, and he brings a lively style to his answers. Despite the promise of startling revelations from newly opened archives, what "we now know" turns out to bear an uncanny resemblance to what we thought then; never has "post-revisionism" seemed so indistinguishable from the original orthodoxy.
Englishtips.org is the first site and the only one for now that provides this book for free. Only text. 296 pages