History is notoriously a “big tent” discipline. Because everything has a past, every subject has a history. The tools appropriate to ferret out those histories multiply just as easily as the topics, depending on the questions being asked and the nature of the evidence preserved (accidentally or otherwise) that might answer them. In what sense is History a coherent “discipline” at all? Is there more to hold it together than just a ferocious commitment to the past tense? Must historians adhere to a recognized and common methodology of practice, but of what might it consist, in the face of so much variety? These questions bedevil historians everywhere, especially when they are trying to figure out what their students should know and/or know how to do. Whatever the answers might be, these questions frame both the motivation for the book under review and its value for readers.
Written by two historians,...