A Practical Guide to Studying History: Skills and Approaches

** 1st Edition - PROSE Award Winner (2018) in the Textbook/Humanities Category ***

This accessible and award-winning introduction to the history discipline explains the latest methodological approaches and debates and serves as a practical handbook to guide students through their studies. The book examines the differences in aims, methods and audiences for different types of history and reflects on the relationship between the skills developed during a history undergraduate degree and the practice of professional history.

A Practical Guide to Studying History encourages students to hone the skills needed to read historical writing critically, write good essays, and participate in historical debates. Incorporating case studies taken from a range of periods and regions around the world, reflecting the varied nature of historical study, the book helps students to understand the subject, and to practice it successfully: it is an indispensable guide to studying history.

For the first time, this edition includes:

* An improved structure with an added ‘From School to University’ section
* 9 new chapters on ‘Making the Transition to University’, ‘Choosing Modules: Risks and Rewards’, ‘Decolonising History’, ‘Sexualities’, ‘What is Historiography?’, ‘Using Primary Sources’, ‘Doing History in a Digital World’, ‘Beyond Text: Objects as Historical Sources’, and ‘History and Activism’
* Updated case studies throughout
* 20 images, maps, study questions, further reading lists, and text boxes
* A companion website which includes five additional chapters, author profiles and interviews, primary source analysis guides, and chapter-related seminar activity suggestions

• Publication date: 29 October 2026
• Page count: 408
• Dimensions: Height 233 mm; Width 157 mm; Thickness 28 mm
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Format: Paperback
• ISBN-13: 9781350429369