The Default Library
Paths / Path 42

History

How we know what happened, who gets to tell it, and the human story from the first cities to yesterday, on every continent.

For: anyone who loves the past and wants the craft behind it, anyone thinking of studying history, and anyone who has heard two confident accounts of the same event and wondered how to judge them.

Shaped by the American Historical Association's History Discipline Core (Tuning project, 2016), the UK QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for History and the world-history surveys that most universities now teach beside national history; told as global history, with the historians' disagreements stated rather than settled.

13readings
3 hoursof reading
4stages
10 reads · 3 deep dives
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Stage 1

Year 1 · The craft and the deep past

3 readings · 39 min
  1. 01ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    Historical Method & Sources: How Anyone Knows What Happened

    Sources, evidence and the historian's questions.
  2. 02ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    The Ancient World: What Survives, and What We Can Say About It

    Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus, China, the Americas and the Mediterranean.
  3. 03ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Epic, Myth & the Ancient Literatures: The First Great Stories

    The first great stories, read as historical sources.
Stage 2

Year 2 · How history is written, and the middle centuries

3 readings · 38 min
  1. 04ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Historiography: Every History Has an Author

    From Herodotus and Sima Qian to the Annales, social history and global history.
  2. 05ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    The Medieval World, 500–1500: One Thousand Years on Every Continent

    Caliphates, Tang and Song China, Byzantium, Mali, the Mongols and Christendom.
  3. 06ReadInteractiveQuiz12 min

    The Early Modern World, 1450–1800: When the Oceans Became Roads

    Empires, encounters, the Atlantic slave trade and the Columbian exchange.
Stage 3

Year 3 · The modern world

3 readings · 43 min
  1. 07ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    Revolutions & Empires, 1750–1914: The Century That Rewrote the Rules

    Industrial and political revolutions, nationalism and the new empires.
  2. 08Deep diveInteractiveQuiz16 min

    The Twentieth Century and After: Wars, Camps, Empires Ending and a Bomb

    World wars, decolonisation, the Cold War and the world since.
  3. 09ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    International Relations: Why Fear Needs No Villain

    How states fight, trade and make peace.
Stage 4

Year 4 · History in public

4 readings · 58 min
  1. 10Deep diveInteractiveQuiz15 min

    Public History, Memory & Heritage: Who Owns the Past

    Museums, monuments, memory and who owns the past.
  2. 11Deep diveInteractiveQuiz16 min

    Classical Social Theory: What Holds a Society Together, and What Pulls It Apart

    The social theory historians argue with.
  3. 12ReadInteractiveQuiz14 min

    History of Architecture: Five Thousand Years of Answers

    Five thousand years of buildings, on every continent.
  4. 13ReadInteractiveQuiz13 min

    Western Music History: A Thousand Years of Choices

    A thousand years of music, as history.
When you finish

the free OpenStax World History volumes; Khan Academy's world history; the Internet History Sourcebooks Project, free; the textbooks named at the end of each subject. See also the library's 06 History & The Changing World, 24 Condensed History of Nations and 32 Histories of Nations.

Next path →

Journalism

How news is found, checked, written and paid for, and why a free press is worth defending.