We look to historians for reliable information about the past. But modern and postmodern critics have challenged history's credibility and objectivity, seeing written history as a product of contemporary culture. Can we find a way to approach history with new confidence? This book reveals the rational basis for historians' descriptions, interpretations and explanations of past events. It defends the practice of history as more reliable than has recently been acknowledged and argues that historians make their accounts of the past as fair as they can and avoid misleading their readers. It concludes by explaining and discussing postmodern criticisms of history.

We look to historians for reliable information about the past. But modern and postmodern critics have challenged credibility and objectivity, seeing written history as a product of contemporary culture. Can we find a way to approach history with new confidence? The Logic of History reveals the rational basis for historians' descriptions, interpretations and explanations of past events. C. Behan McCullagh defends the practice of history as more reliable than has recently been acknowledged. Historians, he argues, make their accounts of the past as fair as they can and avoid misleading their readers. He explains and discusses postmodern criticisms of history, providing students and teachers of history with a renewed validation of their practice. McCullagh takes the history debate to a new stage with bold replies to the major questions historians face today.

Modern relativism and postmodern thought in culture and language challenge the "truth" of history. This book considers how all historians, confined by the concepts and forms of argument of their own cultures, can still discover truths about the past.
The Truth of History presents a study of various historical explanations and interpretations and evaluates their success as accounts of the past. C. Behan McCullagh contests that the variety of historical interpretations and subjectivity does not exclude the possibility of their truth.
Far from debating in the abstract and philosophical only, the author beds his argument in numerous illuminating concrete historical examples. The Truth of History explores a new position between the two extremes of believing that history perfectly represents the past and that history can tell us nothing true of the past.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203448758

Author Biography:
C. Behan McCullagh has been a lecturer in History at Melbourne University and currently lectures in Philosophy at La Trobe University, Australia