This volume combines argument about the nature of history with case studies of how good history is written and researched. At a time of deep scepticism about people's ability to learn anything from the past, even to recapture any serious sense of past cultures and ways of life, Richard Evans shows readers why history is both possible and necessary. He demolishes the wilder claims of postmodern historians who deny the possibility of any realistic grasp of history, and explains the political dangers of losing a historical perspective on the way people live their lives. Richard Evans is the author of Death in Hamburg (winner of the Wolfson Literary Award for History) and Rituals of Retribution.