A history of histories : epics, chronicles, romances and inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the twentieth century / John Burrow.

Originally published: London : Allen Lane, 2007.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [487]-499) and index.

Introduction: A history of histories?--Prologue: Keeping records and making accounts: Egypt and Babylon--pt. 1. Greece. Herodotus: the great invasion and the historian's task--Thucydides: the Polis--the use and abuse of power--The Greeks in Asia. Xenophon: The Persian expedition--The Alexander historians: Arrian and Curtius Rufuspt. 2. Rome. Polybius: universal history, pragmatic history and the rise of Rome--Sallust: a city for sale--Livy: From the foundation of the city--Civil War and the road to autocracy: Plutarch, Appian and Cassius Dio--Tacitus: "Men fit to be slaves"--A provincial perspective: Josephus on the Jewish Revolt--Ammianus Marcellinus: the last pagan historian--General characteristics of ancient historiography--pt. 3. Christendom. The Bible and history: the people of God--Eusebius: the making of Orthodoxy and the Church triumphant--Gregory of Tours: kings, bishops and others--Bede: the English Church and the English people--pt. 4. The revival of secular history. Annals, chronicles and history, Annals and chronicles--Pseudo-history: Geoffrey of Monmouth--Secular history and chronicle: William of Malmesbury's Modern history and the scurrilities of Matthew Paris--Two abbey chronicles: St. Albans and Bury St. Edmunds--Crusader history and chivalric history: Villehardouin and Froissart. Villehardouin's The conquest of Constantinople--Froissart: "matters of great renown"--From civic chronicle to human history: Villani, Machivavelli and Guicciardini--pt. 5. Studying the past. Antiquarianism, legal history and the discovery of feudalism--Clarendon's History of the rebellion: the Wilfulness of particular men--Philosophic history. Hume: enthusiasm and regicide--Robertson: "The state of society" and the idea of Europe--Gibbon: Rome, barbarism and civilization--Revolutions: England and France. Macaulay: the glorious revolution--Carlyle's French revolution: history with a hundred tongues--Michelet and Taine: the people and the mob--History as the story of freedom: constitutional liberty and individual autonomy. Stubb's Constitutional history: from township Parliament--Modernity's first-born son: Burckhardt's Renaissance man--A new world: American experiences. The halls of Montezuma: Diaz, Prescott and the conquest of New Spain--Outposts in the wilderness: Parkman's history of the great West--Henry Adams: from republic to nation--A professoional consensus: The German influence. Professionalization--German historicism: Ranke, God and Machiavelli--Not quite a Copernican revolution--The twentieth century. Professionalism and the critique of "Whig history": history as a science and history as an art--"Structures": cultural history and the Annales school--Marxism: the last grand narrative?--Anthropology and history: languages and paradigms--Suppressed identities and global perspectives: world history and micro-history.