"What is History?" by E. H. Carr includes six lectures he delivered at Cambridge in 1961. In these texts, key themes for every historian are approached, such as "Society and the Individual," "Causality in History," "The Historian and the Facts," and more.
The historian is called "to narrate the facts as they actually happened" (wieeseigentlichgewesen). This phrase from Ranke, one of the leading historians of the 19th century, has "haunted" generations of historians, especially those who passionately seek and claim "objectivity." Yet, according to Carr – and not only him – "facts" are ultimately those that the historian chooses to highlight and study, hence the distinction between "historical facts" and merely "facts of the past."
"History means interpretation," Carr stated, and this approach is not far from Nietzsche's heretical yet groundbreaking saying: "There are no facts; only interpretations." As Carr himself aptly writes: "The belief that a hard core of historical facts exists objectively and independently of the historian's interpretation is a monstrous illusion, which is, however, very difficult to eradicate."
"What is History?" has been described by critics as "one of the most influential books in the field of historiography."
