The Gateway to History Author:Allan Nevins In this book, one of America's most distinguished historians defines the scope and variety of his field and outlines his views on history's objectives both as a science and as an art. Professor Nevins offers stimulating insight into historians' methods of interpreting and presenting the past from the brilliance of Thucydides to the most recent ... more »(1962) scholarship on Europe and America. He sets apart the different approaches to history--biographical, cultural, intellectual, geographical, and political--illuminating the peculiar goals, problems, and development of each disipline. He discusses the question of pre-history and its companion science, archaeology; and he spans the history of the collection and use of records--including the mischief of "garbled" and "cheating" documents, some of which have been sources of popular myths. The Gateway to History is at once an antidote against superficiality and an intriguing example of the author's contention that "realities are seldom dull" when they are approached with an active mind and imagination.« less