This broad survey introduces readers to the major themes, figures, traditions and theories in Western historical thought, tracing its evolution from biblical times to the present.

• Surveys the evolution of historical thought in the Western World from biblical times to the present day.
  
• Provides students with the background to contemporary historical debates and approaches.
  
• Serves as a useful reference for researchers and teachers.
  
• Includes chapters by 24 leading historians.

The essays in this book, like all other texts, have been written in a historical context that shapes both the themes and the prose styles of the authors. A close reading of these texts would in fact lead to many overlapping contexts of politics, social hierarchies, modern communications, and international relations, but we want to focus briefly on two contextual influences that carry the most obvious connections to this book: the wide-ranging public debate about the proper curriculum for American schools and universities, and the more specific debate among historians about new trends in...

Examining the history of nationalism's pervasive influence on modern politics and cultural identities, Lloyd Kramer discusses how nationalist ideas gained emotional and cultural power after the revolutionary upheavals in the late eighteenth-century Atlantic world.

Nationalism in Europe and America analyzes the multiple historical contexts and intellectual themes that have shaped modern nationalist cultures, including the political claims for national sovereignty, the emergence of nationalist narratives in historical writing and literature, the fusion of nationalism and...