historiography: France: Berr’s program for “historical synthesis” was more ambitious than any single historian could achieve; he called for teams of scholars from various disciplines to engage in empirical historical research with the aim of synthesizing their discoveries. Berr argued that no discipline could proceed without some sort of logical…

François-Auguste-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand: In London he began his Essai sur les révolutions (1797; “Essay on Revolutions”), an emotional survey of world history in which he drew parallels between ancient and modern revolutions in the context of France’s own recent upheavals.

The history of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) is rich and varied. Since their modest beginnings in the mid-19th century, they have educated students who have gone on to be leaders in literature, politics, sports, science, activism, the performing arts, and so much more. Most

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), institutions of higher education in the United States founded prior to 1964 for African American students. The term was created by the Higher Education Act of 1965, which expanded federal funding for colleges and universities. In the early 21st

Portugal: Further political strife: …parties were now defined as Historicals (i.e., radicals) and Regenerators (moderates), the alternation of governments gradually ceased to reflect public feeling, and, in the last years of Louis’s reign, republicanism began to gain ground.

musical performance: The 19th century: …20th century, was that of historicism: the active revival of old music. This incipient recognition of the validity of other styles of composition and performance is dated conventionally from the German composer Felix Mendelssohn’s 1829 performance of parts of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, but it was preceded in a…

Francis Bacon: Human philosophy: His Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh is explanatory, interpretative history, making sense of the king’s policies by tracing them to his cautious, economical, and secretive character. Similarly his reflections on law, in De Augmentis Scientiarum and in Maxims of the Law (Part…

Sallust: The Histories, of which only fragments remain, describes the history of Rome from 78 to at least 67 bc on a year-to-year basis. Here Sallust deals with a wider range of subject matter, but party conflict and attacks on the politically powerful remain a central concern.…

Polybius: Polybius’ history of Rome: The Histories, on which Polybius’ reputation rests, consisted of 40 books, the last being indexes. Books I–V are extant. For the rest there are various excerpts, including those contained in the collection of passages from Greek historians assembled in the 10th century and rediscovered and published…

Uruguay: The arts: …classes and backgrounds enjoy reading historietas, comic books that often blend humour and fantasy with thinly veiled social criticism.

Hjalmar Erik Fredrik Söderberg: …of his four collections being Historietter (1898). In these brief sketches, he mocks human complacency and self-deception in his terse, probing, witty style. After 1910 he lived mainly in Copenhagen.

Gédéon Tallemant des Réaux: The Historiettes, completed in about 1659, were published in 1834–35. They contain a mass of information about leading men in Parisian society and French public life from the beginning of the 17th century. The Marquise de Rambouillet gratified his curiosity with stories of the reigns of…

historiography, the writing of history, especially the writing of history based on the critical examination of sources, the selection of particular details from the authentic materials in those sources, and the synthesis of those details into a narrative that stands the test of critical

Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg: …among his works are the Historisch-kritische Beyträge (1754–58) and his introductions to different branches of music, notably the fugue in Abhandlung von der Fuge (1753–54). These works are valuable to students of 18th-century music history, theory, and practice. Significant as well is his eventual endorsement of instrumental music after his…

Johann Gottfried Eichhorn: His chief works included Historisch-Kritische Einleitung ins Alte Testament (3 vol., 1780–83; “Historical and Critical Introduction to the Old Testament”), and a corresponding work for the New Testament (5 vol., 1804–12). Although only partially accurate, they stimulated research and criticism in biblical literature.

Leopold von Ranke: Early career.: Only two volumes of the Historisch-politische Zeitschrift were published from 1832 to 1836, most of the articles being written by Ranke himself. While he tried to explain the conflicts of the times from a historical—and for him that meant nonpartisan—viewpoint, in essence he sought to prove that the French revolutionary…

Jacob Burckhardt: Works of Jacob Burckhardt: … (“Historical Fragments,” 1929 in Gesamtausgabe; Judgments on History and Historians, 1958) selects highlights from his lecture manuscripts and demonstrates impressively Burckhardt’s gift for visualizing history as a whole. Both books contain passages that can be interpreted as prophetic visions of the violent totalitarian states of the 20th century; but more…

Friedrich Meinecke: Die Entstehung des Historismus (1936; Historism) traces the rise of historicism from Giambattista Vico to Leopold von Ranke. Meinecke’s emphasis on the importance of the private concerns of individuals implied a clear opposition to the Nazis, who valued a person only as an instrument of the state’s aims.…

Adam Naruszewicz: Naruszewicz’s most important work is Historia narodu polskiego od przyjęcia chrześcijaństwa, 7 vol. (1780–86; “The History of the Polish Nation from the Times of Its Conversion to Christianity”), which records events up to 1386. Aided in this task by King Stanisław II August Poniatowski, who obtained many documents from archives…

Ephorus: Ephorus’ Historiai (History), his major work, was completed with a 30th book added by his son Demophilus, who edited the entire work. It begins with the return of the Heracleidae to Peloponnesus and ends with the siege of Perinthus (340) by Philip II of Macedon, with a…

asymmetrical warfare: … in Book IV of his History, the Scythians retreated before the main body of the Persian army, drawing it deeper into Scythian territory, only to launch lethal mounted strikes on Persian encampments. Darius was forced to retire, leaving the Scythians in command of the lands beyond the Danube River.

history, discipline that studies the chronological record of events, usually attempting, on the basis of a critical examination of source materials, to explain events. For the principal treatment of the writing of history, and the scholarly research associated with it, see historiography. There are

Attila: Attacks on the Eastern Empire: …in the fragments of the History of Priscus of Panium, who visited Attila’s headquarters in Walachia in company with a Roman embassy in 449. The treaty by which the war was terminated was harsher than that of 443; the Eastern Romans had to evacuate a wide belt of territory south…

Luxembourg National Museum, national museum of Luxembourg, located in the historic centre of Luxembourg city at the Fish Market (Marché-aux-Poissons). It is housed in an extensive late Gothic and Renaissance mansion. The museum has collections of Gallo-Roman art, coins, medieval sculpture, armour,

Hector Boece: …a prima gentis origine (1526; The History and Chronicles of Scotland). Boece’s history is a glorification of the Scottish nation, based on legendary sources, and is more interesting as romance than as history. It had wide currency abroad in a French translation, and the plot of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is…

György Lukács: During this period he wrote History and Class Consciousness (1923), in which he developed a unique Marxist philosophy of history and laid the basis for his critical literary tenets by linking the development of form in art with the history of the class struggle. Turning his back on the claims…

George Peabody Gooch: In the classic History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (1913), he dissociated himself from the widely held view that history is a mere science.

Joseph Priestley: Work in electricity: …who encouraged him to publish The History and Present State of Electricity, with Original Experiments (1767). In this work, Priestley used history to show that scientific progress depended more on the accumulation of “new facts” that anyone could discover than on the theoretical insights of a few men of genius.…

Nicholas Hytner: Hytner’s direction of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys (2004) was rewarded with an Olivier Award and, after the play’s transfer to Broadway, a Tony Award. He later directed a film version (2006) as well. Other shows for the RNT included Travelling Light (2012), Othello (2013), and Great Britain (2014).

Nicholas Hytner: He later directed a film version (2006) as well. Other shows for the RNT included Travelling Light (2012), Othello (2013), and Great Britain (2014).

Frank Borzage: Warner Brothers tenure: History Is Made at Night (1937) is an ultraromantic melodrama. Charles Boyer played a fugitive from justice posing as a waiter aboard an ocean liner, Jean Arthur played the runaway socialite who falls in love with him, and Colin Clive played her jealous, murderous husband.

museum: History museums: The term history museum is often used for a wide variety of museums where collections are amassed and, in most cases, are presented to give a chronological perspective. Because of the encompassing nature of history, museums of this type may well hold so…

Laurence Sterne: Life: …A Political Romance (later called The History of a Good Warm Watch-Coat), a Swiftian satire of dignitaries of the spiritual courts. At the demands of embarrassed churchmen, the book was burned. Thus, Sterne lost his chances for clerical advancement but discovered his real talents. Turning over his parishes to a…

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: The haunted summer of 1816 and the seeds of Frankenstein: …she coauthored a travel book, History of a Six Weeks’ Tour, which recounts the continental tour she and Shelley took in 1814 following their elopement and then recounts their summer near Geneva in 1816.

Antonio Buero Vallejo: …Historia de una escalera (1950; History of a Stairway), for which he was awarded the Lope de Vega, an important literary prize. The play portrays the frustrations of apartment house tenants in a slum in Madrid. His one-act play produced in the same year, Palabras en la arena (“Words in…

Bernard Bosanquet: … he proceeded to his own History of Aesthetic (1892) and Three Lectures on Aesthetic (1915). Both reflect his belief that aesthetics can reconcile the natural and the supernatural worlds. As elsewhere in his work, Bosanquet revealed his distaste for the materialism of his day and favoured the neo-Hegelian antidote, which…

bildungsroman: …Wieland’s Geschichte des Agathon (1766–67; History of Agathon). It was followed by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–96; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship), which remains the classic example of the genre. Other examples are Adalbert Stifter’s Nachsommer (1857; Indian Summer) and Gottfried Keller’s Der

Sadakichi Hartmann: Hartmann published the two-volume A History of American Art (1901; new rev. ed., 1932) and many other works advocating the recognition of avant-garde art and artists. The Sadakachi Hartmann Archive is kept at the University of California, Riverside, where a number of his out-of-print volumes have been edited for…

Aristotle: Travels: …book later known, misleadingly, as The History of Animals, to which Aristotle added two short treatises, On the Parts of Animals and On the Generation of Animals. Although Aristotle did not claim to have founded the science of zoology, his detailed observations of a wide variety of organisms were quite…

Armenian literature: Medieval decline: The History of Armenia by the catholicos (patriarch) John VI Draskhanakertzi is of great value for its account of Arab relations with Armenia, for the author was himself an important participant in the later events he describes. At the turn of the 10th to the 11th…

Armenian literature: Medieval decline: The History of Armenia by Aristakes Lastivertzi, relating the fall of the Bagratid kingdom (1045), the destruction of Ani (1064), and the victories of the Seljuq Turks, is almost as much a prose elegy as a history.

Moses of Khoren: …autobiographical details contained in the History of Armenia, which bears his name as author. His claims to have been the disciple of Isaac the Great (Sahak) and Mesrop Mashtots, to have studied in Edessa and Alexandria after the Council of Edessa (431), and to have been commissioned to write his…

art criticism: Foundations of art criticism in antiquity and the Middle Ages: In his seminal book History of Art Criticism (1936), Lionello Venturi asks: “What is criticism if not a relationship between a principle of judgment and the intuition of a work of art or of an artistic personality?” The principle of judgment can be informed by general ideas about art,…

Julius von Sachs: His Geschichte der Botanik vom 16. Jahrhundert bis 1860 (1875; History of Botany 1530–1860) remains an indispensable guide to the history of botany and to the first stages in the emergence of plant physiology as a separate discipline. Sachs was also influential in establishing the importance…

John Milton: Works on history and theology: History of Britain (1670) was long in the making, for it reflects extensive reading that he began as a very young man. Presumably because he initially contemplated an epic centring upon British history and the heroic involvement of the legendary king Arthur, Milton researched early…

James Mill: …1819, two years after Mill’s History of British India appeared, he was appointed an official in India House, despite his drastic criticisms in the History of British rule in India. He rose gradually through the ranks until he was appointed head of the examiner’s office in 1830. The History, his…

Buddhism: Traditional literary accounts: …in his Chos ’byung (“History of Buddhism”) differs from other traditional accounts only by its listing of the later Mahayana doctrines as part of Shakyamuni’s teachings on earth. All in all, the unity of the mythological and quasi-historical interpretations of the life and death of the “historical” Buddha, in…

François-Xavier Garneau: Garneau’s Histoire du Canada (1845–48), predominantly a political and military account of early Quebec, includes tales of pioneering men and women and descriptions of the major civil, political, and religious leaders. An attempt to conserve Quebec’s religion, language, and laws, the work met with great success…

The history of cancer research and treatment is marked by centuries of scientific inquiry and medical innovation. From the earliest written descriptions of tumors in ancient texts to the sophisticated molecular therapies of today, each milestone reflects a deeper understanding of the complexity of

Huang Yong Ping: …to Random Instructions (1985) and The History of Chinese Painting and the History of Modern Western Art Washed in the Washing Machine for Two Minutes (1987)—show his own iconoclastic vision. For the latter piece, Huang questioned the East-West division taught in standard art history textbooks by placing one on Chinese…

Feng Youlan: His two-volume History of Chinese Philosophy (1934; rev. ed., 1952–53), which utilized Western historical methods, established his reputation and was the standard general history of Chinese philosophy until the late 20th century.

Étienne Gilson: …which were summed up in History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (1955). Among his most charming books is L’École des muses (1951; The Choir of Muses), a study of writers whose works were inspired by love for a woman.

probability and statistics: A new kind of regularity: >History of Civilization in England. Interestingly, probability had been linked to deterministic arguments from very early in its history, at least since the time of Jakob Bernoulli. Laplace argued in his Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1825) that man’s dependence on probability was simply a consequence…

Joseph Genesius: …biographical accounts of patriarchs, the History of Constantinople covers the Byzantine Empire from the reign of Leo the Armenian (813) to the death of Basil I in 886.

Peter Høeg: …om det tyvende århundrede (1988; The History of Danish Dreams), established his reputation in Denmark. The work ranges over three and a half centuries and includes elements of magic realism, experimenting with the narrative voice and wreaking havoc with notions of time and materiality. Høeg followed his debut with Fortællinger…

Adolf von Harnack: …work, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte (1886–89; The History of Dogma), is a monument of liberal Christian historiography. In this work, Harnack traced the origin and development of Christian dogma, which he understood to be the authoritative system of Christian doctrine that had formed by the 4th century ce. His thesis was…

Joseph Schumpeter: His History of Economic Analysis (1954; reprinted 1966) is an exhaustive study of the development of analytic methods in economics. His other books include Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung (1911; The Theory of Economic Development) and Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist…

Canadian literature: From settlement to 1900: Her History of Emily Montague (1769) is an epistolary romance describing the sparkling winter scenery of Quebec and the life and manners of its residents.

Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron Macaulay: …historian best known for his History of England, 5 vol. (1849–61); this work, which covers the period 1688–1702, secured his place as one of the founders of what has been called the Whig interpretation of history. He was raised to the peerage in 1857. Macaulay’s biography of John Bunyan appeared…

David Hume: Morals and historical writing: His History of England, extending from Caesar’s invasion to 1688, came out in six quarto volumes between 1754 and 1762, preceded by Political Discourses (1752). His recent writings had begun to make him known, but these two brought him fame, abroad as well as at home.…

Catharine Macaulay: …in 1760, she began her History of England from the Accession of James I to That of the Brunswick Line, published in eight volumes between 1763 and 1783, in which she championed the Parliamentary cause, condemned Oliver Cromwell as a tyrant, and found her own republican ideals reflected in the…

James Anthony Froude: …English historian and biographer whose History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 12 vol. (1856–70), fundamentally altered the whole direction of Tudor studies. He was immensely prolific, producing also novels and essays.

William Edward Hartpole Lecky: …not interrupt research upon his History of England in the Eighteenth Century, which appeared in 8 volumes (12 in the 1892 edition) from 1878 to 1890 to considerable praise. Lecky’s claim to impartiality was not inconsistent with a desire to refute the very different views expressed by James Anthony Froude,…

Leopold von Ranke: The search for objectivity.: … 1852); and, in 1859–69, the Englische Geschichte, vornehmlich im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert (A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, 1875)—each consisting of several volumes that, although partly rendered obsolete by later research, are still worth reading today for their great narrative skill. In these works, too, Ranke…

Frederic William Maitland: His best-known work, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, 2 vol. (1895), was written with Sir Frederick Pollock; it became a classic and was widely cited simply as “Pollock and Maitland.” Among Maitland’s other writings are Bracton’s Note-Book (1887), an edition of the…

literature: National and group literature: His History of English Literature (5 vol., 1863–69) is an extensive elaboration of these ideas. It is doubtful that anyone today would agree with the simplistic terms in which Taine states his thesis. It is obvious that Russian literature differs from English or French from German.…

William John Courthope: His History of English Poetry (6 vol., 1895–1910) traces the development of English poetry in relation to the age in which it was written. He also continued Whitwell Elwin’s edition of Alexander Pope’s poetical works and wrote Joseph Addison, a life of the essayist, in both…

Sir Leslie Stephen: His greatest learned work was History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876). His philosophical study The English Utilitarians (1900) was somewhat less successful, though it is still a useful source. His philosophical contribution to the rationalist tradition, Science of Ethics (1882), attempted to wed evolutionary theory to ethics,…

Robert H. Lowie: …it at some length in The History of Ethnological Theory (1937). Included among the ideas he advanced was the suggestion that religion and mythology may originate in dreams that have some kind of biological basis. He also conjectured that cultural selection is an aspect of natural selection.

William Edward Hartpole Lecky: …its companion study, the two-volume History of European Morals (1869), which explored themes initiated in the former work—the declining sense of the miraculous, the aesthetic expressions of religious belief, and the complex relationship of society and morality. Pervading it was a desire to show the “natural causes” underlying the prevalence…

Edwin G. Boring: …to write his best-known work, A History of Experimental Psychology (1929, 2nd ed. 1950), which established him as one of the first historians of the field in the United States. Boring also wrote The Physical Dimensions of Consciousness (1933) and Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology (1942).

thug: …is found in Ẓiyāʾ-ud-Dīn Baranī, History of Fīrūz Shāh, dated about 1356.) The thugs would insinuate themselves into the confidence of wayfarers and, when a favourable opportunity presented itself, strangle them by throwing a handkerchief or noose around their necks. They then plundered and buried them. All this was done…

Francesco Guicciardini: …and his Storie fiorentine (History of Florence) from 1378 to 1509. The latter constitutes one of the major sources for the history of the republican regime after 1494 and reveals Guicciardini’s gifts for historical analysis and narrative. Elected in 1511 as Florentine ambassador to King Ferdinand of Aragon, he…

Henri Martin: …an author of a famous history of France that included excerpts from the chief chroniclers and historians, with original expository passages filling the gaps.

Henri Martin: …work, together with the continuation, Histoire de France depuis 1789 jusqu’à nos jours, 6 vol. (1878–83; “History of France from 1789 to Our Time”), gives a complete history of France and superseded earlier such works. Martin was a staunch republican and sat in the National Assembly as deputy for Aisne…

Gabriel Daniel: …he wrote a pioneering work, Histoire de France depuis l’établissement de la monarchie française (1st complete ed., 1713; ed. by P. Griffet, 1755–60; The history of France from the time the French monarchy was establish’d, 1732). He also wrote Histoire de la milice française, 2 vol. (1721; “History of the…

J.B. Bury: His History of Freedom of Thought probably best expresses his conception of history as the record of man’s rational struggles and progress. In addition to providing high standards of scholarly excellence, he was one of the first English historians to participate in the revival of Byzantine…

Alain-René Lesage: Lesage’s Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane (1715–1735; The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane) is one of the earliest realistic novels. It concerns the education and adventures of an adaptable young valet as he progresses from one master to the next. In the service of…

George Grote: …devoted himself entirely to the History of Greece, which was published in 12 volumes between 1846 and 1856; it ended with the events of 301 bc. It was quickly recognized (in the original or in translation) as the best Greek history in any language, and its authority remained unchallenged for…

Jacob Burckhardt: Works of Jacob Burckhardt: , History of Greek Culture, 1963)—and some essays in art history: Erinnerungen aus Rubens (1898; “Suggestions on Rubens”), Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte von Italien (1898; “Contributions to the Art History of Italy”). Of particular significance are two later posthumous publications. Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen (1905; Force and Freedom: Reflections…

Henry Esmond, historical novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, published in three volumes in 1852. The story, narrated by Esmond, begins in 1691 when he is 12 and ends in 1718. Its complexity of incident is given unity by Esmond and his second cousin Beatrix, who stand out against a background of

In the early 20th century, the captivating new art form of the motion picture became big business in a small district of Los Angeles. Ever since, Hollywood has been producing beloved entertainment for the masses and turning its stars into the biggest celebrities in the world. Its outsize cultural

Edward Westermarck: …book was the influential The History of Human Marriage (1891), in which he advanced his ideas on primitive marriage and society. His most important work, however, is considered to be The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, 2 vol. (1906–08), in which he proposed a theory of ethical relativity…

Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy: …five volumes during 1923–30; the History of Indian and Indonesian Art (1927) became the standard text in the field. The Transformation of Nature in Art (1934) and Figures of Speech or Figures of Thought (1946) are collections of essays expressing his views on the relationship of art to life, traditional…

Celtic literature: Late period: …all available material on the history of Ireland to 1616, directed by Michael O’Clery. Geoffrey Keating produced the first historical (as opposed to annalistic) work in his Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (written c. 1640; History of Ireland) as well as some fine verse in both old and new meters and…

biblical literature: The modern period: …Kaufmann (1890–1963) produced the encyclopaedic History of Israelite Religion from Its Beginnings to the End of the Second Temple (8 vol., 1937–56) in Hebrew that pursues a path involving a radical revision of current biblical criticism and interpretation. Mosheh Zevi Hirsh Segal (died 1968) dealt with a wide area of…

Italian literature: The Risorgimento and after: …Storia della letteratura italiana (1870–71; History of Italian Literature). His main tenet was that literature was to be judged not on its intellectual or moralistic content so much as by the spirit of its “form,” and the role of the critic was to discover how this form had been unconsciously…

Francesco Guicciardini: …of the most important contemporary history of Italy, Storia d’Italia.

race: Transforming race into species: In a book titled The History of Jamaica (1774), Long asserted that “the Negro” was “void of genius” and “incapable” of civilization; indeed, he was so far inferior as to constitute a separate species of mankind. Long’s work was published as a defense of slavery during a period of…

Engelbert Kämpfer: …first published in English (The History of Japan, 1727) after his death and appeared in the original German only after additional translations into Latin, Dutch, and French had already appeared. Kämpfer’s manuscripts are in the British Museum.

Meyer Waxman: Waxman’s principal work, History of Jewish Literature, 4 vol. (1930–41; 2nd ed., 5 vol., 1938–60), summarizes and evaluates the various fields of Jewish literature from the end of biblical times to the mid-20th century. His religious studies include the Handbook of Judaism (1947) and Judaism—Religion and Ethics (1958),…

John Arbuthnot: …1727 under the composite title Law is a Bottom-less Pit; or, The History of John Bull, and it established and popularized for the first time the character who was to become the permanent symbol of England in cartoon and literature. An edition by A.W. Bower and R.A. Erickson was published…

Thomas More: Early life and career: More’s History of King Richard III, written in Latin and in English between about 1513 and 1518, is the first masterpiece of English historiography. Though never finished, it influenced succeeding historians. William Shakespeare is indebted to More for his portrait of the tyrant.

Sophie von La Roche: …first and most important work, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771; History of Lady Sophia Sternheim), was the first German novel written by a woman and is considered to be among the best works from the period in which English novels, particularly those of Samuel Richardson, had great influence on…

history of Liechtenstein, a survey of important events and people in the history of Liechtenstein from ancient times to the present. The Rhine plain has always been the focus of settlement. For centuries the valley was occupied by two independent lordships of the Holy Roman Empire, Vaduz and

The History of Love, novel by American writer Nicole Krauss that was published in 2005 and was later adapted as a 2016 film. This sad and achingly beautiful book is a skillfully crafted exploration of loss and its aftermath. With continually changing narrative voices, it weaves at least three

historiography: History of science: …in this vein, Lynn Thorndike’s A History of Magic and Experimental Science (1923–58), discussed two seemingly distinct approaches that share the belief that human practice can affect the natural world. Distinguishing between the two approaches requires criteria—effectiveness and rationality—that are essentially modern. Sorting out what was scientific work can easily…

Michael Critobulus: His History of Mehmed the Conqueror covers only the first 17 years (1451–68) of Mehmed’s 30-year reign, but it remains a vividly descriptive and authoritative source for scholars of Byzantium.

Cyril Stanley Smith: His book, A History of Metallography: The Development of Ideas on the Structure of Metals Before 1890 (1960), was based on this work.

Latin American literature: Historiographies: The History of Mexico). Translated into Spanish as Historia antigua de México in the early 19th century, it manifests the Classical erudition of Jesuits in Mexico City and signals the evolution of Creole consciousness. A lawyer and theologian, Antonio Sánchez Valverde wrote important essays on…