A history of histories: epics, chronicles, romances and inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the twentieth century

Introduction: A history of histories?

Prologue: Keeping records and making accounts: Egypt and Babylon

pt. 1. Greece. Herodotus: the great invasion and the historian's task

Thucydides: the Polis

the use and abuse of power

The Greeks in Asia. Xenophon: The Persian expedition

The Alexander historians: Arrian and Curtius Rufus

pt. 2. Rome. Polybius: universal history, pragmatic history and the rise of Rome

Sallust: a city for sale

Livy: From the foundation of the city

Civil War and the road to autocracy: Plutarch, Appian and Cassius Dio

Tacitus: "Men fit to be slaves"

A provincial perspective: Josephus on the Jewish Revolt

Ammianus Marcellinus: the last pagan historian

General characteristics of ancient historiography

pt. 3. Christendom. The Bible and history: the people of God

Eusebius: the making of Orthodoxy and the Church triumphant

Gregory of Tours: kings, bishops and others

Bede: the English Church and the English people

pt. 4. The revival of secular history. Annals, chronicles and history. Annals and chronicles

Pseudo-history: Geoffrey of Monmouth

Secular history and chronicle: William of Malmesbury's Modern history and the scurrilities of Matthew Paris

Two abbey chronicles: St. Albans and Bury St. Edmunds

Crusader history and chivalric history: Villehardouin and Froissart. Villehardouin's The conquest of Constantinople

Froissart: "matters of great renown"

From civic chronicle to human history: Villani, Machivavelli and Guicciardini

pt. 5. Studying the past. Antiquarianism, legal history and the discovery of feudalism

Clarendon's History of the rebellion: the Wilfulness of particular men

Philosophic history. Hume: enthusiasm and regicide

Robertson: "The state of society" and the idea of Europe

Gibbon: Rome, barbarism and civilization

Revolutions: England and France. Macaulay: the glorious revolution

Carlyle's French revolution: history with a hundred tongues

Michelet and Taine: the people and the mob

History as the story of freedom: constitutional liberty and individual autonomy. Stubb's Constitutional history: from township Parliament

Modernity's first-born son: Burckhardt's Renaissance man

A new world: American experiences. The halls of Montezuma: Diaz, Prescott and the conquest of New Spain

Outposts in the wilderness: Parkman's history of the great West

Henry Adams: from republic to nation

A professoional consensus: The German influence. Professionalization.

German historicism: Ranke, God and Machiavelli

Not quite a Copernican revolution

The twentieth century. Professionalism and the critique of "Whig history": history as a science and history as an art

"Structures": cultural history and the Annales school

Marxism: the last grand narrative?

Anthropology and history: languages and paradigms

Suppressed identities and global perspectives: world history and micro-history.