Highlight Series: ‘A Quick Summary & Analysis’ Database of Foundational Scholarship in History


The Life of Historian presents the Highlight Series, an ongoing series that offers intelligent and succinct overviews of historical works.

 

Need to digest a historian’s book quickly and easily?

 

 

No worries,
The Life of Historian is here to help.

 

The purpose of the Highlight Series is to provide a brief introduction to foundational scholarship in variety of fields of historical study. And to elucidate on the illustrious genealogy of many historiographical conversations and debates. Additionally, the series also includes works The Life of a Historian finds to be thought-provoking or, more simply, ones that we have enjoyed reading.

 

A breakdown of the Highlight Series,
and what you can expect.

 

Each installment will include as least some, if not all, of the following sections:

  • An Abridged History – a short discussion on how the book came to be
  • Purpose & Argument – why it is important and what it adds to the historiography
  • Methodology – approach and sources used to construct the narrative and defend the argument/s
  • Other Works – other books written by the historian or scholar

 

Below is an alphabetical list of the works currently in the Highlight Series.


Highlight Series


 

Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England.

Dudziak, Mary L. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy.

Rediker, Marcus. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750.