Books That Inspire 2003
 
The Historian's Craft
Marc Bloch


I first read Marc Bloch’s slight volume as an undergraduate and have reread it many times since. For me it was the first book I found that said why doing history was important and how one might do it. It is an eloquent testament from the founder of the Annales school of social history, and it became for me a sign of the value in pursuing scholarship in dark days because Marc Bloch, a French Jew who would not leave the fatherland though he had his chances, was executed by the Nazis for his work in the Resistance.
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Dan Snell
L. J. Semrod Presidential Professor
History