Classics of Applied History: Lessons of the Past

How history is written: an anthology of classic texts from Thucydides and Machiavelli to Nietzsche and E.H. Carr

The admonition that we should learn from history is a well-known truism, but what does that actually mean? In other words, what is history? This anthology compiles the best-known discussions of the topic. From Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, Machiavelli’s Discourses and Friedrich Nietzsche’s “The Use and Abuse of History” to more contemporary studies on the subject such as E.H. Carr’s What Is History?, the excerpts gathered here offer a comprehensive overview of how history is created and recorded.

Contributors include: Lord Acton, Graham Allison, Carl Becker, J.B. Bury, Herbert Butterfield, E.H. Carr, Johann Gustav Droyson, Niall Ferguson, John Lewis Gaddis, Pieter Geyl, J.H. Hexter, Michael Howard, Niccolo Machiavelli, Margaret MacMillan, Ernest May, Richard Neustadt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Polybius, John Robert Seeley, Benjamin F. Shambaugh, Thucydides, Leopold von Ranke and Philip Zelikow.