This book is truly interdisciplinary, it asks how researchers from the humanities and natural sciences engage with and uncover the past and how their present influences what they and how the past is used for different purposes. This book informs students and researchers from each of the disciplines about the ways and pitfalls of each approach to inform their own research. Contributions from historians, literary scholars, geologist, cosmologists, evolutionary biologists, paleontologists and paleoanthropologists are given equal weight and asked how they engage with the past and present to offer, for the first time, a forum for each discipline to learn from each other and to offer new ideas of how the past can be engaged with from the present. The Engaging with … series offers practical instruction alongside theoretical standpoints to encourage an interdisciplinary discussion of emerging areas of collaboration.

This provocative new history of early modern Europe argues that changes in the generation, preservation and circulation of information, chiefly on newly available and affordable paper, constituted an 'information revolution'. In commerce, finance, statecraft, scholarly life, science, and communication, early modern Europeans were compelled to place a new premium on information management. These developments had a profound and transformative impact on European life. The huge expansion in paper records and the accompanying efforts to store, share, organize and taxonomize them are intertwined with many of the essential developments in the early modern period, including the rise of the state, the Print Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, and the Republic of Letters. Engaging with historical questions across many fields of human activity, Paul M. Dover interprets the historical significance of this 'information revolution' for the present day, and suggests thought-provoking parallels with the informational challenges of the digital age.

This provocative new history of early modern Europe argues that changes in the generation, preservation and circulation of information, chiefly on newly available and affordable paper, constituted an 'information revolution'. In commerce, finance, statecraft, scholarly life, science, and communication, early modern Europeans were compelled to place a new premium on information management. These developments had a profound and transformative impact on European life. The huge expansion in paper records and the accompanying efforts to store, share, organize and taxonomize them are intertwined with many of the essential developments in the early modern period, including the rise of the state, the Print Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, and the Republic of Letters. Engaging with historical questions across many fields of human activity, Paul M. Dover interprets the historical significance of this 'information revolution' for the present day, and suggests thought-provoking parallels with the informational challenges of the digital age.

Thoughtful and scholarly, yet accessible, "The Changing Face of the Past: An Introduction to Western Historiography" provides readers with an overview of the changing approaches to understanding the past in the western world over the last 2,500 years. Arguing that it is indispensable for students of history to have a familiarity with the history of their discipline, it demonstrates how these precursors were essential in forming our present views on how history should be composed. Beginning with the earliest historical thought and ending with the twentieth century the book explores diverse voices and perspectives on the past through a combination of expository essays by the author and carefully selected primary-source selections that reflect the essays most important themes.
The opening chapter addresses the basic concepts of history, historians, and historiography, providing definitions of key terms and critical information on the role and conventions of historians.
Subsequent chapters survey periods of history chronologically, adding philosophical context, and exploring the significance of varying viewpoints from the writers of the time. These chapters include: Beginnings: The Invention of History; Roman History; History in the Middle Ages; Early Modern Historiography; History and Enlightenment; Historicism and Empiricism; and Into the Twentieth Century.
As students read through the material they are exposed to some of the most important figures in the development of western historical thought, including Herodotus, Tacitus, Guicciardini, Gibbon, and Marx. They learn that history has never been the mere representation of past events. History can be purely pragmatic. It can be a moral enterprise. It can be an expression of culture. It can reflect the highest aspirations, and it can come from a place of crisis.
"The Changing Face of the Past" gives students a sweeping yet detailed introduction to important primary source material. It challenges them to consider what these writings say about the past and more importantly, what they say about history s ongoing endeavor to describe, explain, and interpret it.
Paul Dover earned his Ph.D. at Yale University. Dr. Dover, a historian of Europe and the Mediterranean world in the late medieval and early modern periods, is on the faculty at Kennesaw State University where he teaches historiography, and is an instructor in the first-year honors Great Books program. His research interests focus on the political, diplomatic, and cultural history of Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with an emphasis on diplomacy in the Renaissance. Dr. Dover's professional writing has appeared in the Journal of Early Modern History, the "Journal of Urban History," and the "International Journal of the Classical Tradition.""

One of the prominent themes of the political history of the 16th and 17th centuries is the waxing influence officials in the exercise of state power, particularly in international relations, as it became impossible for monarchs to stay on top of the increasingly complex demands of ruling. Encompassing a variety of cultural and institutional settings, these essays examine how state secretaries, prime ministers and favourites managed diplomatic personnel and the information flows they generated. They explore how these officials balanced domestic matters with external concerns, and service to the monarch and state with personal ambition. By opening various perspectives on policy-making at the level just below the monarch, this volume offers up rich opportunities for comparative history and a new take on the diplomatic history of the period.