History: A Very Short Introduction

by John Arnold

What is history? It’s a question that’s sometimes asked and one that John Arnold, a professor of history at Cambridge, tries to answer in History: A Very Short Introduction. Normally, books that address this issue (aka ‘historiography’) are soporific but this is an entertaining book, opening with a murder in medieval France. The chapter on primary sources is also striking, as we hear about Mrs. Burdett of Great Yarmouth who is left destitute after her husband leaves her. Arnold makes the case for doing history—and why it matters—lightly. As he puts it in the preface of the book, “it is intended as a work of enthusiasm.”