Literate civilizations have always celebrated or contested images of their past by writing about them. Historiography considers how and why such writing has taken the various shapes that it has.

This new work gives teachers and students a definitive overview of the most important developments in the techniques of and approaches to historical writing.

Each author presents a study of recent historiography in relation to a particular theme or problem--frequently in the context of other disciplines. Introductory surveys help readers to locate the periods and places discussed. Articles contributed by a carefully selected panel of distinguished academics convey in direct, jargon-free language a genuinely international, wide-angled view of the ideas, traditions and institutions that lie behind the contemporary urgency of world history.

This new work offers an engaging response to the fascination current in all branches of the humanities with how the past has been turned into text and made into history.