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how to read history books

History "Reading" In Graduate School: A Follow-Up

Although I wrote that I agreed with many points in Larry Cebula’s “How to Read a Book in One Hour” post, I must admit that I did so with some regret. I truly do enjoy good history writing when I find it. And graduate school would be a waste if one only took books apart rather than relishing, at times, in an author’s prose. Indeed, maybe graduate programs are turning out substandard writers, in part, because seminar reading programs are too heavy with 15-books-in-15-weeks type syllabi? Perhaps it is less that programs are not teaching historians how to write, and Read more