Making history : the storytellers who shaped the past / Richard Cohen.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The monk outside the monastery -- The dawning of history : Herodotus or Thucydides? -- The glory that was Rome : from Polybius to Suetonius -- History and myth : creating the Bible -- Closing down the past : the Muslim view of history -- The Medieval chroniclers : creating a nation's story -- The accidental historian : Niccolò Machiavelli -- William Shakespeare : the drama of history -- Zozo and the marionette infidel : M. Voltaire and Mr. Gibbon -- Announcing a discipline : from Macaulay to von Ranke -- Once upon a time : novelists as past masters -- America against itself : versions of the Civil War -- Of shoes and ships and sealing wax : the annales school -- The red historians : from Karl Marx to Eric Hobsbawm -- History from the inside : From Julius Caesar to Ulysses S. Grant -- The spinning of history : Churchill and his factory -- Mighty opposites : wars inside the academy -- The wounded historian : John Keegan and the military mind -- Herstory : from Bān Zhāo to Mary Beard -- Who tells our story? From George W. Williams to Ibram X. Kendi -- Bad history : truth-telling vs. "patriotism" -- The first draft : journalists and the recent past -- On television : from A. J. P. Taylor to Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

"A fascinating, epic exploration of who gets to record the world's history -- from Julius Caesar to William Shakespeare to Ken Burns -- and how their biases influence our understanding about the past. There are many stories we can spin about previous ages, but which accounts get told? And by whom? Is there even such a thing as "objective" history? In this lively and thought-provoking book, Richard Cohen reveals how professional historians and other equally significant witnesses, such as the writers of the Bible, novelists, and political propagandists, influence what becomes the accepted record. Cohen argues, for example, that some historians are practitioners of "Bad History" and twist reality to glorify themselves or their country. Making History investigates the published works and private utterances of our greatest chroniclers to discover the agendas that informed their -- and our -- views of the world. From the origins of history writing, when such an activity itself seemed revolutionary, through to television and the digital age, Cohen brings captivating figures to vivid light, from Thucydides and Tacitus to Voltaire and Gibbon, Winston Churchill and Henry Louis Gates. Rich in complex truths and surprising anecdotes, the result is a revealing exploration of both the aims and art of history-making, one that will lead us to rethink how we learn about our past and about ourselves."-- Provided by publisher