ABSTRACT

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Why Bother With History?
argues for an increasingly important role for a revitalised historical study. Examining the motivations of past historians, the author rejects the ancient aspiration to a 'history for its own sake' and argues that historians' importance lies in their own adoption of a moral standpoint, from which a story of the past can be told, that facilitates the attainment of a future we desire.
Inevitably controversial, in that it challenges many of the assumptions of modernist history, this is an interdisciplinary book, which draws in particular on psychology and literature.

chapter 1|18 pages

History for history's sake

chapter 3|23 pages

History and psychology

Identity – memory and forgetting; meaning and purpose

chapter 4|27 pages

History, politics and power

chapter 5|26 pages

History and religion

chapter 6|18 pages

History and education