What History argues
- History begins as a deliberate act of inquiry — Herodotus's word historíē means 'investigation' — turning memory and rumour into tested evidence.
- From Thucydides' political autopsy to Ibn Khaldun's theory of social cohesion — and on through Rome's own chroniclers (Caesar, Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius) to the grand narrative histories of Gibbon, Macaulay, and Parkman — the historians ask not only what happened but why peoples and powers rise and fall.
Primary works in History (13)
- Herodotus — The Histories (−440) — Book · read the full text
- Thucydides — History of the Peloponnesian War (−400) — Book · read the full text
- Polybius — The Histories (−150) — Book · read the full text
- Sima Qian — Records of the Grand Historian (−94) — Book · read the full text
- Tacitus — Annals (110) — Book · read the full text
- Ibn Khaldun — Muqaddimah (1377) — Book · read the full text
- Julius Caesar — The Gallic Wars (−50) — Book · read the full text
- Livy — The History of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita) (−27) — Book · read the full text
- Tacitus — Germania (98) — Book · read the full text
- Suetonius — The Lives of the Twelve Caesars (121) — Book · read the full text
- Gibbon — The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) — Book · read the full text
- Macaulay — The History of England (1848) — Book · read the full text
- Parkman — France and England in North America (1865) — Book · read the full text
Chambers connected to History
- Philosophy — The historians' search for causes is philosophy applied to time; Polybius and Ibn Khaldun theorise the cycles of constitutions and civilisations.
- Governance & Society — The record of how states actually behaved is the raw material of statecraft — Thucydides and Tacitus are read as manuals of power.
Reading Trails through History
- Foundations of the Just Society Reading Trail — The argument for how we should live together, from philosophy to law.