A Brief History of

What Daniel Boorstin did for science in The Discoverers, Colin Wells now does for history in A Brief History of History. An accessible and lively biography of history as a living idea, this book brings together evocative sketches of the great historians with concise summaries of their most important works. Moving forward through the ages, Wells shows us how such brilliant minds have changed our understanding of history, how history itself moved forward over time as a way of approaching the past, and why “history” is a startlingly fluid concept, with an evolutionary course—a story—all its own. History is the turf on which we fight our culture wars. Given its humble origins as a minor literary genre in ancient Greece, the study of history stands today as perhaps the most successful monument to the global spread of Western civilization, rivaling even science in its ubiquity. Yet it did not have to turn out that way. While tracing the evolution of history, Wells shows how this branch of knowledge has at times been rejected and scorned by those who questioned its very legitimacy. Wells begins by arguing that history has two “parents” in the ancient Greek world, epic poetry and science, and that its first two practitioners, Herodotus and Thucydides, each took after one of those parents respectively. This dichotomy serves as a backdrop for the larger narrative that follows, in which “the scientist” dominates the writing of history until very recent times, when “the storyteller” makes a comeback. A riveting blend of vibrant prose and penetrating insight, A Brief History of History is a must for anyone interested in how we look at the past. What Daniel Boorstin did for science in The Discoverers, Timothy Ferris for cosmology in Coming of Age in the Milky Way, and Robert Heilbroner for economics in The Worldly Philosophers, Colin Wells now does for history in A Brief History of History. The most accessible, concise, and clear-sighted biography ever of history as a living idea, this book brings together evocative sketches of the great historians with concise summaries of their key works. From its humble origins as a minor literary genre in ancient Greece, to its modern-day status as perhaps the most successful monument to the global spread of Western civilization, Wells traces the remarkable evolution of this branch of knowledge, and shows how it has long been the turf on which we fight our culture wars. A riveting blend of readability, vibrant humor, and penetrating insight, A Brief History of History is a must for anyone for whom living in the present, and looking to the future, is unimaginable without serious reflection on the past.