“A lucid, muscular, and often sly reflection” on the worth and purpose of historical scholarship by the award-winning author of The Third Reich Trilogy (Kirkus). In this volume, the renowned historian Richard J. Evans offers a fervent and deeply insightful defense of his craft and its importance to civilization. At a time when fact and historical truth are under unprecedented assault, Evans shows us why history is necessary. Taking us into the historians’ workshop, he offers a firsthand look at how good history gets written. In staunch opposition to the wilder claims of postmodern historians, Evans thoroughly dismantles the notion that a realistic grasp of history is impossible to attain. He then goes on to explain the deadly political dangers of losing a historical perspective on the way we live our lives. In the tradition of E.H. Carr’s What Is History? and G.R. Elton’s The Practice of History, Evans’ In Defense of History delivers “a model of lucid and intelligent historiographical analysis” (The Guardian, UK).

Richard Evans wrote In Defence of History at a time when the historian's profession was coming under heavy attack as a result of the ‘cultural turn’ taken by the discipline during the late 1980s and the 1990s. Historians were being forced to face up to postmodern thinking, which argued that, because all texts were the product of biased writers who had incomplete information, none could be privileged above others. In this reading, there could be no objective history, merely the study of the texts themselves. While In Defence of History addresses all aspects of historical method, its key focus is on an extensive evaluation of this postmodern thinking. Evans judges the acceptability of the reasoning advanced by the postmodernists – and finds it badly wanting. He is strongly critical both of the relevance and of the adequacy of their arguments, seeking to show that, ultimately, they are guilty of failing to accept the logic of their own position. All texts are equally valid, or invalid, they suggest – while insisting that the products of their own school are in fact more ‘true’ than those of their opponents. Evans concludes by pointing out that this same argument could be advanced to suggest that the works of Holocaust deniers are just as valid as are those of historians who accept that the Nazis set out to commit genocide. So why, he demands, is no postmodernist willing to say as much? A devastating example of the usefulness of relentless evaluation.

Seventy years after its demise, historian Richard J. Evans charts the ways our understanding of the Third Reich has changed.

'Brilliant, a 5 out of 5 masterpiece' Evening Standard The renowned historian of the Third Reich takes on the conspiracy theories surrounding Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, in a vital history book for the 'post-truth' age The idea that nothing happens by chance in history, that nothing is quite what it seems to be at first sight, that everything that occurs is the result of the secret machinations of malign groups of people manipulating everything from behind the scenes is as old as history itself. But conspiracy theories are becoming more popular and more widespread in the twenty-first century. Nowhere have they become more obvious than in revisionist accounts of the history of the Third Reich. Long-discredited conspiracy theories have taken on a new lease of life, given credence by claims of freshly discovered evidence and novel angles of investigation. This book takes five widely discussed claims involving Hitler and the Nazis and subjects them to forensic scrutiny: that the Jews were conspiring to undermine civilization, as outlined in 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'; that the German army was 'stabbed in the back' by socialists and Jews in 1918; that the Nazis burned down the Reichstag in order to seize power; that Rudolf Hess' flight to the UK in 1941 was sanctioned by Hitler and conveyed peace terms suppressed by Churchill; and that Hitler escaped the bunker in 1945 and fled to South America. In doing so, it teases out some surprising features these, and other conspiracy theories, have in common. This is a history book, but it is a history book for the age of 'post-truth' and 'alternative facts': a book for our own troubled times.

This work is commonly held to be the foundational text for Western Marxism. As Stalinism took over in Russia, Lukacs was subjected to attacks for deviation. In the 1920s he wrote this response.

A fresh argument for rioting and looting as our most powerful tools for dismantling white supremacy. Looting -- a crowd of people publicly, openly, and directly seizing goods -- is one of the more extreme actions that can take place in the midst of social unrest. Even self-identified radicals distance themselves from looters, fearing that violent tactics reflect badly on the broader movement. But Vicky Osterweil argues that stealing goods and destroying property are direct, pragmatic strategies of wealth redistribution and improving life for the working class -- not to mention the brazen messages these methods send to the police and the state. All our beliefs about the innate righteousness of property and ownership, Osterweil explains, are built on the history of anti-Black, anti-Indigenous oppression. From slave revolts to labor strikes to the modern-day movements for climate change, Black lives, and police abolition, Osterweil makes a convincing case for rioting and looting as weapons that bludgeon the status quo while uplifting the poor and marginalized. In Defense of Looting is a history of violent protest sparking social change, a compelling reframing of revolutionary activism, and a practical vision for a dramatically restructured society.

The author makes an argument for clemency in judging Hollywood's interpretations of history and thoroughly investigates its serious limitations and opportunities to construe history.

'Sensationally good ... A riveting story, the real-life spooks and spies far more compelling than anything you will see on the screen ... history doesn't come more fascinating than this' Evening Standard For over 100 years, the agents of MI5 have defended Britain against enemy subversion. Their work has remained shrouded in secrecy - until now. This first-ever authorized account reveals the British Security Service as never before: its inner workings, its clandestine operations, its failures and its triumphs. 'Definitive and fascinating ... whether reporting on Hitler in the 1930s, the Double-Cross System of the second world war, Zionist terrorism, the atom spies, the Cambridge spies, the so-called Wilson plot or the 1988 shooting of the IRA bombers in Gibraltar, this book is essential reading' Alan Judd, Spectator 'The British Secret Service has opened its archives - and even 'insiders' may be in for a surprise ... magisterial ... extremely readable' Oleg Gordievsky, The Times 'Compelling ... a feast' Max Hastings, Sunday Times 'A superb account ... He has captured every important detail of the Service ... unlikely to be surpassed for another 100 years' Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph

Probing at the very core of the American political consciousness from the colonial period through the early republic, this thorough and unprecedented study by Larry E. Tise suggests that American proslavery thought, far from being an invention of the slave-holding South, had its origins in the crucible of conservative New England. Proslavery rhetoric, Tise shows, came late to the South, where the heritage of Jefferson's ideals was strongest and where, as late as the 1830s, most slaveowners would have agreed that slavery was an evil to be removed as soon as possible. When the rhetoric did come, it was often in the portmanteau of ministers who moved south from New England, and it arrived as part of a full-blown ideology. When the South finally did embrace proslavery, the region was placed not at the periphery of American thought but in its mainstream.