Is History Fiction?

The relationship between history and fiction has always been a controversial one. Can we ever know that a historical narrative is giving us a true account of what actually happened? Provocative and fascinating, this book is an original and insightful examination of the ways in which history is—and might be—written. It traces History’s doubleness and divided nature, beginning with its founding figures, Herodotus and Thucydides, right up to the key figures of historical reflection, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Benedetto Croce, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault and Hayden White. The authors explore the challenges posed by postmodernism to history and the literary conventions of most historical writing. In this second edition they bring their history of history up to the present in their study of the History Wars and new approaches to world history and environmental history.