A Peak into the Ivory Tower: Historical Research

By Al Preston

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            While I’ve talked about how we do book reviews, I don’t think I’ve talked about why we’re doing them in great depth.

            In the land of academic, and also public history, we do a lot of reading. It makes a lot of sense. There are only so many methods of sharing history with others. Academic historians write long tomes about their research, which can be built, effectively, from reading a lot of other books. Personally, I’ve had to read multiple two hundred to four hundred pages books in a week to discuss those books in class. I have learned to read a lot in a very short amount of time.

            In those kinds of situations, rarely do you read every word in the book, nor would you want to. Historians can do many things, and often dry writing is one of those things. A well-crafted book will tell you the majority of the arguments in the introduction, topic and final sentences of paragraphs, and the conclusion. That can cut the reading time of a huge monolith to a few hours.

            Outside of the time crunch of being ready for class, historians will spend more time on sources important to their work. I’ve carefully read and re-read medieval manuscripts (usually different translations), but also a handful of chapters from larger works. When you work with really specific topics, you rarely find a source about exactly what you’re looking for. Primary sources can also be incredibly difficult to search and parse particular bits of information from.

            When you look at any historical book, you are sure to find long, long lists of sources. That’s a lot of reading and a lot of information. Thankfully, there are processes that historians have that allow them to process and utilize this information effectively. I’m going to run you through that process, because we use it here, and the book reviews are little pieces of that process.

            The first thing historians do when approaching a new research project, is choose a topic. Historians don’t just do research for fun or present blunt facts. They want to make a new argument about history, perhaps look at it with a new lens, perhaps make new connections. So, as they read about their topic, they start to narrow down their research. For example, I once wanted to research the Christian church and gender in the medieval period. As I started to skim major sources, I narrowed my focus down to saints, then female saints, and then discovered that there were gender crossing saints.

            Tada! I now had a specific topic that still left a lot of room for me to explore sources of different kinds. I only got to that topic through much reading. It can become overwhelming, so now it comes to organizing what I read about this topic and future sources.

            Secondary sources, specifically ones from historians, have their own arguments. You can get primary sources from other historians, and you can know who arguments have already been made. Forming your own argument can come from agreeing or disagreeing with other historians so it’s important to know what others have said in order to support your own argument better. As my professors have told me, the field of history is just a bunch of nerds arguing head canons and fighting it out in conferences (usually verbally, but sometimes there are fist fights in parking lots).

             All of this comes to the next important step in historical research, historiography. Every secondary source read about a topic gets organized into a historiography, or, more simply, ‘what does everyone else say about this topic?’

            Writing a historiography can allow a historian to understand what research exists, what arguments have been made, the reason those arguments were made, and how those sources can aid in their research. In addition, the gaps in research where the historian can create their own arguments become clear. Now, this is where I’ll connect back to the book reviews.

            A historiography usually features generalized snapshots of whole books. The book reviews here are elongated summaries and analysis of a source. Now, I’m speaking, in particular, about book reviews considered more modern secondary sources. I try to make it clear what the arguments of these books are. However, behind the scenes, each of these books goes into the research and understanding of exhibits, podcasts, and other forms of history this website provides. Not every source, of course. It’s not a very interesting book review to listen to us go on and on about a singular chapter in a huge book.

            However, these books all serve a greater purpose in the grand scheme of things. As much as we love reading these things for fun, we’re also reading them to learn, just as much as you read this or other things on this website.

            I will admit, I didn’t realize this was the way book reviews functioned at first. I think my historian brain took over as I wrote! Thankfully, this just helps us all. You won’t see a full historiography; they are incredibly boring to read at times. Nor does it matter so much to the way we present information here. But you will always see little bits and pieces of one in the book reviews. Especially, when we start directly comparing two books!