Greatest Historians

Wasn’t a total waste of $$. So proud!

modern day lewis and clark

Fact: Moran has collected enough artifacts over his career to open 100 smithsonians.

these guys are an up and comers, expect to hear their names in the future

Most important historian in the 19th century for ancient history

History of Halicarnassus his birthplace and Greco Persian war

Known as the father of Western history, Herodotus earns recognition for being the early-bird of historians.

Herodotus gave us "Histories," Thucydides gave us the sequel: "History of the Peloponnesian War." Another historian whose influence has been felt throughout the ages.

Plutarch's writings influenced the thinking of others for centuries and centuries and centuries. He is a primary source of Roman history.

Wrote the greatest ever history of the entire world, the Story of Civilization series.

it is true and great in learning about HISTORY

Very overlooked and versatile. "Distant Mirror" is a classic on medieval Europe while "Proud Tower" and "Guns of August" are sharp on the coming and start of WW1. Her book on Stillwell and China covers WW2. Even "March of Folly" shows amazing versatility as she goes from Troy to papal decisions before the Reformation to the British handling of the coming of the American Revolution to the American experience in Vietnam. Lost steam at the end with "First Salute" which was published after her death. A masterful historian.

2-time Pulitzer Prize winning contemporary American historian

Like Gibbon, actually analyzed the primary sources.

Hume is responsible for the rather comprehensive "History of England," and was a prominent philosopher as well as historian.

Aside from being one of the most famous philosophers in history, Voltaire was also a quite-capable historian. Some people seem to be able to do everything.

Solid nitty-gritty historian of the Civil War. Stands up solidly "yonder like a stonewall" against neo-confederate myth-making that the Civil War was not about slavery. Check out the Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina declarations of causes of secession, and Confederate VP Alexander Stephens "Cornerstone Speech" if you have any doubts.

Another popular contemporary American historian.

The greatest Chinese historian; the Eastern equivalent of Herodotus with the difference that while Herodotus' work focused on a single war, Sima Qian's massive Records covered 2000 years of Chinese history.

His work unbelievable and even i think he is my best historian after Herodotous and Al Masudi.He described all events thoroughly as well as interesting way.

Greek military leader and student of Socrates; completed Thucydides' unfinished History of the Peloponnesian War and wrote an account of his own experience with a group of Greek mercenaries stranded in Persia.

Author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People; the greatest pre-Norman English historian.

Best known as a philosopher and a sociologist, Focault has made, however, essential contributions to contemporary history. His ideas opened a wide range of new fields of research, mainly in social and cultural history. Subjects like minorities or thought systems history owe a lot to his works.

Pop historian. Not as highly ranked as his sales and TV appearances might suggest. Nasty plagiarism scandal with his Wild Blue.

Zinn's listened to the majority of people in history who had been silenced - women, blacks, workers, farmers, Latinos, etc. Previously, many historians consciously or unconsciously excluded them. What had been taught as "real" core history. was mainly that of white male elites. Zinn began when there was less material on outsiders than there is today. His effort to include, say Native Americans might seem schematic now, but today we have more to work with - to a great extent because Zinn's work. Howard Zinn does not just look at outsiders. He looks at history from their' point of view. People accustomed to insiders' vantage point of see him as biased because he includes what had been missing. Zinn and other social historians, such as Eric Hobsbawm have also shown outsiders to be makers of history not just passive victims. Without this: 1. History has moral blinders 2. It fails to see key forces at work - like trying to understand a whale, without looking at the sea, or the other creatures great and small that affect it. National elites often expect historians to serve as patriotic cheer leaders. Social science has tried to reject cheer leading, and look at reality. Ask a typical college class how many have heard of the Boston Massacre (almost all) versus the My Lai Massacre one or two). Old fashioned biases are alive and well. Conservatives say Zinn is biased for telling the truth about genocide, slavery, or the price of war that he observed as a bombardier in World War II. Rather than say he is biased for illuminating the dark parts of our history real historians are looking at what he brought to light.

In response to the criticisms: Howard Zinn's work is not free from inaccuracies, as is the case with every historian, but his contribution as a social historian is undeniable in understanding American history. He made a very important point that the perspective of a historian is always the product of his ideology, and because bias is inevitable one must choose whether he should look at it through the eyes of the elites, or those 'from below'. His magnum opus, "People's History" should be required reading for any student of American history in addition to the works of those like Eric Foner.

I'm afraid some confuse fame with greatness. Mr. Zinn took a proctologist's view of history and of the U.S. -- fact-based, but preoccupied, dismissing the the great scope, complexity, and beauty of the human condition. He once said the world would have been better off if the U.S. had never been consummated. His thinking reflects the opposite of wisdom.

Makes the US elite look like Snidely Whiplash villains. Frequently portrays the common man as being easily fooled- all the better for a Marxist elite to "guide"

Massive command of all the literary sources relating to the ancient world and a clear scientific approach to analysis and interpretations