The History Book

INTRODUCTION

The ultimate aim of history is human self-knowledge. In the words of 20th-century historian R. G. Collingwood: “The value of history is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.” We cannot hope to understand our lives without it.

History itself has a history. From earliest times, all societies—literate or pre-literate—told stories about their origins or their past, usually imaginative tales centering around the acts of gods and heroes. The first literate civilizations also kept records of the actions of their rulers, inscribed on clay tablets or on the walls of palaces and temples. But at first these ancient societies ...