Abstract

E.H. Carr's What is History?, published in 1961, was a runaway bestseller and the most influential book to examine writing and thinking about history this century. To commemorate the book's forthieth anniversary, David Cannadine has gathered an all-star cast of contributors to ask and seek answers to E.H. Carr's classic question for a new generation of historians: what does it mean to study history at the start of the twenty-first century? The contributors pose this question anew for the most important and lively subfields of history writing today. For example, Alice Kessler-Harris ponders "what is gender history now?" while Paul Cartledge asks "what is social history now?" This volume stands along E.H. Carr's classic, paying tribute to his seminal inquiry while moving the debate into new territory, ensuring its freshness and relevance for a new century of historical study.