Description:
How History Works assesses the social function of academic knowledge in the humanities, exemplified by history, and offers a critique of the validity of historical knowledge. The book focusses on history's academic, disciplinary ethos to offer a reconception of the discipline of history, arguing that it is an existential liability: if critical analysis reveals the sense that history offers to the world to be illusory, what stops historical scholarship from becoming a disguise for pessimism or nihilism? It is valuable reading for anyone interested in historiography and historical theory.
Review Quotes:
"Persuasively written and developing a challenging thesis based on the pervasiveness of historicised understanding in giving illusory meaning to our world, this book expresses a thought-experiment that needs to be experienced by all historians willing to reflect on the theoretical nature and social impact of their discipline."
Jonathan Gorman, Queen's University Belfast, UK
"Martin L. Davies's How History Works is the sharpest barrage of arrows directed at history in a long time. Davies is especially severe in his treatment of "public history," and of "normal" history in its "public" (regime-stabilizing) function... I much admire Davies's wit, erudition, insouciant style, and, let it be said, hard work."
Allan Megill, University of Virginia, USA