Larry Madaras

This book wasn't quite what I expected. It's designed primarily to be used as a textbook. It that capacity, it has some potential. The editors do a good job of emphasizing that history is not just a set of facts, but also involves interpretation of the facts. They also draw on essays that offer a range of historical methods to give students a better idea of how historians approach questions. Each "controversy" is introduced with some contextual material and summed up with a solid historiography. At times the editors are a bit one sided in their critiques of the two "opposing" views. I put "opposing" in quotation marks because the two essays selected for each controversy didn't always fit the imposed dichotomy. There were a few essays that barely addressed the question to which they were connected, or did so only tangentially. All-in-all, however, the book serves as a good starting point for looking at different interpretations of history and how to critique them.… (mais)