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Popkin so far in the first few pages of reading, has already hit a bit too close to home for all of us. Being history students he mentions us all in the second and third page of the preface, and as he continuous through chapter one targets his subject, and nails us in the forehead with it. He’s a blunt author, which comes as a relief compared to some difficult topics. Historiography is quite a contentious area, because it seems that every segment we begin to find research, we can find another historians work form a previous era has done their own work on it. Popkin immediately jumps in and tells us that this is, a necessary, perhaps evil, part of our studies. To use the other works to derive our own conclusions we must understand and evaluate their reasons for writing, the standards for historians of the time, the abilities commonly taught to scholars of history at the time, and an endless amount of corridors thereof. This may not be easy, it may not be fun in some senses, but it is where we can have some true investigation. I enjoy seeing that the debate and reasoning within the field is centralized on our different approaches to a problem. The more I read the easier it is to understand, that history is in flux, despite how much we would like it to be a solid timeline of everything. The most important thing to stand out in the first chapter to me was that, trends or commonalities, do not create standards. Just because an event has shown to cause a certain effect, that doesn’t mean the effects can be slightly or even enormously different from what would be expected. This section also deals with truthful history, helping mediate between certain arguments in politics, or emotional issues. With these tools I think our goals as Historians can be better achieved, using the writings from Popkin, although I’m sure even though this guide may be adequate for a small understanding, even these topics can be viewed very differently by other historians.
