How To Skim A History Book

Although historians have adapted to reading veritable libraries of books, for many people reading can be daunting.  Everybody leads busy lives and doesn’t always have the time to set aside for something that seems to offer no immediate benefit.  Academic books also have the reputation of being difficult to understand – either poorly-written or jargon-y – discouraging potential readers from cracking open the cover.  While it is tempting to imagine an unbridgeable divide between expert and layperson and their use of books, I don’t accept that.  I believe that everyone has the ability to understand academic histories and the important insights they offer (hence this blog/book club).  In order to get the most out of a book it always makes sense to read it in its entirety; however, if you worry about reading a lot of books in a small amount of time, I’ll let you in on a secret – YOU DON’T HAVE TO READ THE ENTIRE BOOK. 

Make no mistake, you’ll definitely have to read – but there’s no reason to spend more than a few hours on a particular book unless you desperately want to be an expert on it. Skimming does have its cons in that you will probably miss some of the important nuances the author demonstrates throughout the book and illuminating pieces of evidence that connect smaller events to the thesis, to say nothing of the potential to miss a book’s big idea through human error.  However, it also offers the enticing possibility of getting the book’s key concepts as efficiently as possible. Since I am interested in the Trump Syllabus as a way to broaden my own knowledge of American history and do not intend to write a book on this syllabus, I plan to use the techniques I will lay out below to skim-read and capture its central ideas; if you lack the time to commit to reading an entire book, I encourage you to do the same.

Yesterday, we looked at the major elements of a history book; by skimming a book we can get that information as quickly as possible. To determine a book’s thesis, it usually helps to start with the front cover (go figure!).  History books sometimes have titles that are clever quotes or sayings but give little away; however, the subtitle often provides key information such as a date range or important figures and serves as a clue to the thesis.  After reading the title, examine the book’s table of contents; sometimes chapter titles can provide good insights into what the author thinks are the turning points and you can make note of these chapters to read.  Once you’ve made it through this basic information, turn to the book’s introduction and pay careful attention as you read it.  The introduction is often the most important part of a history book as the author typically explains the thesis (sometimes explicitly so), and why they think it is important.  In some instances that is not the case, but generally the introduction will provide a substantive overview of the book that helps the reader understand its argument and significance.

Once you’ve read through the first pages of the book, turn to the end of the book (cheating!) and examine the bibliography, footnotes, and index.  The bibliography often lists the major archives the author used in preparing the book and demonstrates the sources they used.  If there is no bibliography, take a moment to skim through the book’s footnotes and see what specifically they used – are these government sources?  Are they business records? Are they personal letters and diaries? Once you know what sources are being used, you can reflect on the author’s introduction to estimate the form their argument will take.  After examining the footnotes, turn to the index of a book to get a sense of the book’s key concepts and where the author discusses them; if there is an unique, important word in the book’s title try looking up its entry in the back of the book.  Generally, key terms will have extensive listings in the index, so look for the entries with the longest listings of page numbers; also pay attention to shorter entries related to key terms that fit with what you think the book’s themes might be. After making a note of the most important page numbers from the index, see what chapters these pages correspond to; they will be the chapters to read. (Note that proper nouns also often have long entries in the index, but because these are so common they probably won’t be helpful for this skimming exercise; it’s generally better to focus on words and terms that might be unique to this book and its argument.)

If you are interested in examining a book’s historiography (and if it was not covered in the introduction) look through the footnotes to the introduction or the first few notes from your key chapters.  These footnotes might be longer, providing a description of the books the author is engaging and their rationale.  If it is too difficult to find historiographical information, feel free skip this exercise.

Once you’ve made a note of the chapters where the book’s key terms congregate, it’s time to buckle down and actually do some reading.  By identifying the key chapters before starting to read, you should have saved yourself a substantial amount of time.  When reading these chapters keep in mind some important questions that tie you back to the book’s argument – what is happening in this chapter that caused things to change from the beginning of the chapter to the end of the chapter?  As you read a few chapters, expand that question – what has happened across these chapters that caused things to change from the beginning of the book until the end? After you’ve read the key chapters, take a moment to read the conclusion/epilogue.  By this point, if you’ve identified the thesis, sources, and key moments, the conclusion should be fairly obvious and contain little new information.

To give you a sense of all of these ideas, here’s an example of the notes I took on one of the books from the Trump Syllabus that I already read (and highly recommend), Charles Postel’s The Populist Vision. My notes for this book are longer than I’d like (typically I’d like to limit myself to one page), but they should still be helpful in demonstrating how I evaluate the key components of a book.

Once you’ve gotten to the end of the book, take a moment to reflect back on its argument.  If you’re the type of person who likes to take notes, scan your page; if you don’t want to take notes because you’re not being tested on the book, that’s fine too.  But, ask yourself questions about the thesis, sources, and turning points.  Some examples might be: Does the author use sources that support the conclusion of the thesis?  Are there other sources that might dispute the author’s thesis? Do the turning points the author highlights seem plausible; are there other moments and/or explanations of those turning points that might alter the author’s story? Was the timeframe of the book arbitrary, and is there a good reason why the story begins and ends where it does? Does the argument hold up if you expand the timeline to include (relevant) events before or after the scope of the book? If the author’s thesis claims to speak for “all Americans” does it take efforts to examine the perspectives of people from a diverse group of race, class, and gender perspectives (and if not, how might including those perspectives change the author’s thesis)? How did the book change your thinking about the topic in question? Asking yourself these (or other, similar) questions will help you begin the process of critical thinking in response to the book.

Now that we’ve examined the key parts of a history book and how to get the big ideas as quickly as possible, it’s time to put our training into action with our first book of the year.  I’ll see everyone back here on Monday for Kevin Kruse’s White Flight.