History 181B - Reading Strategies

History 181B: Modern Physics

Some Reading Strategies for History Courses
A List of Informal Suggestions

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The big picture

History isn't just about learning facts and dates. It's also about understanding how and why things happened. So don't get bogged down in all the facts and dates, at the expense of the big picture. Ask, "Why would this event be important, and how does it relate to other events?" These questions give you the framework to hang your facts and dates on. This is not to say that you can forget all facts and dates, but to suggest remembering them within a meaningful context.

Information overload

History readings often give you more information than you actually need to remember. Again, here the big picture is important. Authors include details to make their cases more persuasive or memorable. But on the same principle as above, not all these details need to be noted down and stored away.

Intelligent reading

History courses have a lot of reading. Therefore you need to practice active, intelligent reading. Use the reading questions as your guides. Keep asking yourself, "What is the point of all this? What am I supposed to be getting out of it?" Then organize your reading around answering those questions. It helps to scan material quickly before really getting into it; it helps to look back over it afterwards to fix the main points in your mind. In between, however, you have to read closely.

Close reading

History texts need close attention. A history course is not the History Channel; the material does not come predigested. Many texts need to be read slowly at least once, sentence by sentence. You are trying to recover the sense of authors from a different time. Ask yourself where they are coming from, and don't expect it to be easy. Look up words you don't understand; make it your job to answer your own questions. Expect to go back and reread after class.

Selective reading

History of physics is burdened by reading materials that can be dense and off-putting. These provide good practice for a real-world skill: making sense of texts you don't fully understand. If you get swamped by equations or technicalities, skim along until you understand again. Try to figure out the author's point. Then return to the difficult spot and see how it fits. For many purposes, this level of understanding suffices.

Surprises

History is not a smooth, easy narrative. Expect the story to be complicated — more complicated than you have probably heard it before. When you read, don't block out the things that seem strange. When something contradicts what you've been told, don't ignore it. Instead, pay closer attention.

Interpretation

History is interpretive. Historians (authors, people in general) will sometimes tell different stories about events or attribute different significance to them. The accounts you have before you do not represent the final truth. This does not mean, though, that history is bunk (to cite Henry Ford). What these accounts represent are the efforts of (usually) intelligent, thoughtful people to make sense of what we can find out about what happened in the past.