The Study of Studying History
When a history book appears on a bookstore shelf, it can provide the student of the particular topic volumes of valuable information. Citations, bibliography, footnotes or end notes can provide far more detail than the text of the book alone. A more astute student of the topic may recognize the author's personal interpretation of the significance of the events contained in the book. Actually, there is a legitimate reason for this. When a historian chooses a topic on which he wishes to write, it is usually to either explore the topic, analyze it, or prove or disprove accepted theories and beliefs on the topic. However, the properly trained historian will view everything he researches, compiles, analyzes, and writes, through the lens of Historiography. Historiography is the study of the study of history, as well as historians who wrote it. There are philosophies integral to historiography, based on a strong grasp of chronology, which is a chain of events in history, and the orde...