Contemporary American historians write about almost everything that has affected nearly everybody. They write about agriculture, housework, illness, leisure, banking systems, sever systems, etc. Their new history touches many Americans and invites each to make a personal interpretation of history.
A wide variety of new historians has linked the past more strongly to the present. According to Benedetto Croce, the past is unknowable. History reflects the need of historians to make sense out of their own worlds. Opening the practice of history to groups previously excluded from the profession has demonstrated the validity of Croce's view. Views of the past vary with generations and because of divergent experiences from the historians sex, ethnicity, class, and race. When we read history, we are reading a particular historian's encounter with the world. The historian is devoted to the facts. He or she spends years of his or her life studying the archives. The historian believes that his or her story represents reality. Historians can be characterized by nationality, school of thought, or theoretical and methodological preference.
While committed to a particular interpretation, the historian stays faithful to evidence and determined to test the accuracy, reliability, and adequacy of every historical account. History succeeds when it tells us how things really were, and it reminds us that the only access we have to that past is through the imagination of a contemporary person. Historians constantly criticize, correct, and supplement each other's views. When historians argue with each other, they get closer to the truth. The shape and dimension of a particular landscape become more clear into view the more historians bring different perspectives and common skills to the tasks of documentation, description, and narration.
The writing of American history has passed through four stages: the providential, the rationalist, the nationalist, and the professional.
