Seeking engaging books about history that grapple with their sources
October 15, 2022 11:12 AM Subscribe
I'm interested in engaging history books about the pre-modern era—aside from that, any time period or part of the world is great. Specifically, though, I'm looking for authors who spend some time—but not too much!—grappling with the difficulties posed by contradictory sources or simply missing information. A couple of examples inside.
Two books I've especially enjoyed that fit this bill are Marc Morris' Norman Conquest, where he takes care to point out authors' biases and contradictions between sources, and Philip Freeman's Alexander the Great, where he wrestles from time to time with the fact that we don't really have any great sources contemporary to Alexander, leaving us with gaps in the record.
I'm not looking for books devoted to historiography or that get bogged down in the nitty-gritty of sourcing or debates between academics. But I do like to know how we know what we know!
Two books I've especially enjoyed that fit this bill are Marc Morris' Norman Conquest, where he takes care to point out authors' biases and contradictions between sources, and Philip Freeman's Alexander the Great, where he wrestles from time to time with the fact that we don't really have any great sources contemporary to Alexander, leaving us with gaps in the record.
I'm not looking for books devoted to historiography or that get bogged down in the nitty-gritty of sourcing or debates between academics. But I do like to know how we know what we know!
Most books by Natalie Zemon Davis (The Return of Martin Guerre; Trickster Travels) could probably fit this bill! Davis is typically very open about the gaps in her sources, and tries to compensate for them by making suggestions based on historical plausibility. It's very clear when this is the case, and what sorts of sources she's relying on for those claims of plausibility.
Davis generally focuses on the early modern Mediterranean, especially France and to a lesser extent Italy. I should note that her brand of creative reconstruction isn't really typical of academic historians—but perhaps that makes it an even more interesting example of creative engagement with sources?
posted by the tartare yolk at 12:39 PM on October 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Davis generally focuses on the early modern Mediterranean, especially France and to a lesser extent Italy. I should note that her brand of creative reconstruction isn't really typical of academic historians—but perhaps that makes it an even more interesting example of creative engagement with sources?
posted by the tartare yolk at 12:39 PM on October 15, 2022 [2 favorites]
Lost Harbor: The Controversy Over Drake's California Anchorage by Warren Hanna. This book takes what should be a simple question, "where did the Golden Hind anchor in northern California to refit-and-repair before attempting the Pacific crossing?" and looks at what is and what is not known, based on various original sources including Drake's own account. Oh sure, you can look at a map and say "Drakes Bay," but the evidence that Drakes Bay was the landing site is sketchy. An interesting examination of how even small facts are hard to pin down.
posted by SPrintF at 1:27 PM on October 15, 2022
posted by SPrintF at 1:27 PM on October 15, 2022
When I took a historiography course in graduate school, we read Carlo Ginsberg's The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (1980) and Jonathan Spence's The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (1985) as examples of innovative engagement with sources. I remember both being fascinating reads.
posted by Scarf Joint at 1:52 PM on October 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Scarf Joint at 1:52 PM on October 15, 2022 [4 favorites]
Agrippina: A Biography of the Most Extraordinary Woman in the Roman World, by Emma Southon, is a wry and witty biography of a woman who was hugely influential but who lived at a time when the lives of women were almost entirely undocumented. The author talks about the small amount of info we have, the conclusions most historians have come to based on them, and the places where those conclusions are likely very biased. It was very interesting.
(The other subtitle I've seen is "Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore," but I think that only appears on the British version of the book.)
posted by gideonfrog at 2:23 PM on October 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
(The other subtitle I've seen is "Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore," but I think that only appears on the British version of the book.)
posted by gideonfrog at 2:23 PM on October 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Montaillou is kind of a history-from-below classic
posted by Ardnamurchan at 2:39 PM on October 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Ardnamurchan at 2:39 PM on October 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's "A Midwife's Tale" does this. Subtitle: "The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812". Spends some time reflecting on what isn't in the diary and is usually not reflected in paper records.
posted by brainwane at 3:22 PM on October 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by brainwane at 3:22 PM on October 15, 2022 [1 favorite]
The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World by Patrick Wyman is an excellent look at the early modern era. Wyman frequently acknowledges the paucity of, and conflicts between, sources. Hat tip: his podcast Tides of History is one of three I subscribe to.
posted by billsaysthis at 8:42 PM on October 15, 2022
posted by billsaysthis at 8:42 PM on October 15, 2022
I really enjoyed The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci and Montaillou cited above. In the same bin in my 'mind' is Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudon. Seemingly it is free to download.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:16 PM on October 15, 2022
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:16 PM on October 15, 2022
Response by poster: Thanks for all the suggestions, folks! Am I using the term "pre-modern" incorrectly, though? I had thought that that referred to the period before roughly 1500 but almost all of the ideas here are post-1500.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 1:41 PM on October 16, 2022
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 1:41 PM on October 16, 2022
I, personally, just read your question too quickly and missed the "pre-modern" stipulation! I apologize; the book I recommended does not fit your criteria.
posted by brainwane at 4:18 PM on October 16, 2022
posted by brainwane at 4:18 PM on October 16, 2022
Am I using the term "pre-modern" incorrectly, though? I had thought that that referred to the period before roughly 1500 but almost all of the ideas here are post-1500.
Yes and no. There's this nebulous period of "early modernity"—which for Western Europe might mean something like 1453 or 1492 to 1789—which is often but not always considered "premodern." The Mediterranean world of Martin Guerre and Leo Africanus (so, c. 1550) resembled that of 1450 more than that of 1650 in some important ways. So when people speak of "Modern France," they might very well mean post-Revolutionary rather than post-Columbian! (This is even more confusing when you look at non-European examples, like the China of Spence's Memory Palace, which often use the same language of periodization with markedly different chronological bounds.)
For something a little more dated (but only just!), perhaps Barbara Hanawalt's The Ties that Bound? As I recall, it does a very good job of describing one particular kind of document (medieval English coroners' inquests) and showing what sorts of information you can get from putting those docs together with a variety of other sources.
posted by the tartare yolk at 5:23 PM on October 16, 2022
Yes and no. There's this nebulous period of "early modernity"—which for Western Europe might mean something like 1453 or 1492 to 1789—which is often but not always considered "premodern." The Mediterranean world of Martin Guerre and Leo Africanus (so, c. 1550) resembled that of 1450 more than that of 1650 in some important ways. So when people speak of "Modern France," they might very well mean post-Revolutionary rather than post-Columbian! (This is even more confusing when you look at non-European examples, like the China of Spence's Memory Palace, which often use the same language of periodization with markedly different chronological bounds.)
For something a little more dated (but only just!), perhaps Barbara Hanawalt's The Ties that Bound? As I recall, it does a very good job of describing one particular kind of document (medieval English coroners' inquests) and showing what sorts of information you can get from putting those docs together with a variety of other sources.
posted by the tartare yolk at 5:23 PM on October 16, 2022
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posted by polecat at 12:34 PM on October 15, 2022