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Average Customer Rating:

Once it was thought-provoking, now dangerously out-of-date

Customer Rating:

I am interested by this book, because it has had its impact on the way history is taught. But now - sixteen years after it was first published - it is a pinnacle of everything wrong about historical theory in the modern world. There as some things which are just plain patronising about it, like the idea that historical literature is different from the past: 'This might strike you as odd for you may have missed this distinction before..' on page 6 (Oh really? Like I hadn't noticed the difference between a book about the blitz and having bombs dropped on me.) But the important issue is the post-modernist bias of text-obsession. It criticises history on the grounds that to 'do' history you must read texts, which are just discourses. This is fundamentally wrong. Yes, you must read texts, but you must also look at archaeological remains, to feel sensations, to be alive. To be alive now is the best evidence we have as to what it was like to be alive in the past. One suspects, reading his book, that Jenkins has never really been alive. Rather he reduces all interaction with the past to a jaw-dropping receptiveness to textual information. For most people the questions posed by the past, and the answers to those questions, are not matters of text but correlation (or contrast) between past evidence and present reality. As a result this book may well be held up (soon) as a key example of how attempts to use post-modernist ideas to control history are bound to fail, even if they cause us to look again at our sources. If Jenkins' theories held true, every word in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography would be dodgy, open to doubt. If that is the case it is only so because one could, in theory, object to every source's interpretation. But one cannot - there is no doubting that princess Diana died in 1997. Life is too short and history is too interesting - and history is too great and life too interesting - to pay heed to the arguments advanced in this book

Fatuous, overly-critical and irritatingly smug

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Having read this book as part of a series of books for a Uni course, compared to the likes of Marc Bloch, Karl Marx and others, I couldn't help wondering why, if he knows so much about the problems with historical writing, Jenkins has never bothered to write a history book, rather than a historical theory book. Others have criticised the traditional methodology of historians but put their own ideas into practice to demonstrate what they mean. Jenkins seems to have neither the imagination nor the ability to write history, so instead he has turned his attention to criticising it. Having said this, he has some interesting ideas, but they must be compared to the writing of Richard Evans (In Defence of History), Bloch and as many others as possible, which will rather show up the flaws in his reasoning.

A book that will change the way you look at everything

Customer Rating:

Rethinking History is an essential guide to the debates concerning the world we are living in, relevant not just for historians but for everyone. It raises interesting questions concerning our education system, politics and our perception of "bias" and "truth" when it comes to the past and our attitudes towards it. In some places the book leaves a great deal to be desired in its grammar and sentence structure, but get beyond the bad use of the English language, and this book does in fact have some very important things to say. Believe me, it will change the way you look at everything!

A fresh look at Historiography

Customer Rating:

I picked up this book having read EH Carr, and with an open mind, and was not disappointed. Jenkins really hits the nail on the head with this insightful book that prompts one to take a fresh look at some of today's most controversial historical problems. It is a very engaging, readable book that has been so useful in my personal study of history, particularly in the attention paid to the relevance and irrelevance of historical sources and facts. I thoroughly recommend this to anyone studying History!