Threads and Traces

Threads and Traces

True False Fictive

By Carlo Ginzburg Translated by Anne C. Tedeschi

$29.95

Publication Date: 9th January 2012

Carlo Ginzburg’s brilliant and timely new essay collection takes a bold stand against naive positivism and allegedly sophisticated neo-skepticism. It looks deeply into questions raised by decades... Read More
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Carlo Ginzburg’s brilliant and timely new essay collection takes a bold stand against naive positivism and allegedly sophisticated neo-skepticism. It looks deeply into questions raised by decades... Read More
Description
Carlo Ginzburg’s brilliant and timely new essay collection takes a bold stand against naive positivism and allegedly sophisticated neo-skepticism. It looks deeply into questions raised by decades of post-structuralism: What constitutes historical truth? How do we draw a boundary between truth and fiction? What is the relationship between history and memory? How do we grapple with the historical conventions that inform, in different ways, all written documents? In his answers, Ginzburg peels away layers of subsequent readings and interpretations that envelop every text to make a larger argument about history and fiction. Interwoven with compelling autobiographical references, Threads and Traces bears moving witness to Ginzburg’s life as a European Jew, the abiding strength of his scholarship, and his deep engagement with the historian’s craft.
Details
  • Price: $29.95
  • Pages: 336
  • Carton Quantity: 22
  • Publisher: University of California Press
  • Imprint: University of California Press
  • Publication Date: 9th January 2012
  • Trim Size: 6 x 9 in
  • Illustration Note: 10 b-w photographs
  • ISBN: 9780520274488
  • Format: Paperback
  • BISACs:
    HISTORY / Europe / General
    HISTORY / Historiography
    HISTORY / World
Reviews
“No other living historian approaches the range of [Ginzburg’s] erudition. Every page of Threads and Traces, his latest work to appear in English, offers an illustration of it.”
- Perry Anderson, London Review Of Books
“This is a brilliant text, the product of a scholar of rare breadth and knowledge.”
- Ben McDonald, University of Melbourne, Melbourne Historical Jrnl
“Surprising pace, intellectual range, and learned discourse is typical throughout the book. . . . Artfully constructed essays.”
- Raymond Grew, University of Michigan, Jrnl Of Interdisciplinary History
“Ginzburg’s range is remarkable . . . rich in references to and insights about diverse historical perspectives.”
- Publishers Weekly
“A collection of essays by the profoundly original, intellectually wide-ranging, Italian-Jewish historian Carlo Ginzburg . . . an illuminating collection of chapters, deftly translated from the original Italian by Anne C. and John Tedeschi.”
- Benjamin Ivry, Forward
“These essays humanely and generously explore the question of how history ought to be written.”
- Jonathan Beckman, The Literary Review
Author Bio
Carlo Ginzburg is retired from Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa (Italy). He is the author of numerous books that have been translated into English including The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction

1. Description and Citation
2. The Conversion of the Jews of Minorca (A.D. 417–418)
3. Montaigne, Cannibals, and Grottoes
4. Proofs and Possibilities:
Postscript to Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre
5. Paris, 1647: A Dialogue on Fiction and History
6. The Europeans Discover (or Rediscover) the Shamans
7. Tolerance and Commerce: Auerbach Reads Voltaire
8. Anacharsis Interrogates the Natives:
A New Reading of an Old Best Seller
9. Following the Tracks of Israël Bertuccio
10. The Bitter Truth: Stendhal’s Challenge to Historians
11. Representing the Enemy:
On the French Prehistory of the Protocols
12. Just One Witness:
The Extermination of the Jews and the Principle of Reality
13. Details, Early Plans, Microanalysis:
Thoughts on a Book by Siegfried Kracauer
14. Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It
15. Witches and Shamans

Notes
Index
Carlo Ginzburg’s brilliant and timely new essay collection takes a bold stand against naive positivism and allegedly sophisticated neo-skepticism. It looks deeply into questions raised by decades of post-structuralism: What constitutes historical truth? How do we draw a boundary between truth and fiction? What is the relationship between history and memory? How do we grapple with the historical conventions that inform, in different ways, all written documents? In his answers, Ginzburg peels away layers of subsequent readings and interpretations that envelop every text to make a larger argument about history and fiction. Interwoven with compelling autobiographical references, Threads and Traces bears moving witness to Ginzburg’s life as a European Jew, the abiding strength of his scholarship, and his deep engagement with the historian’s craft.
  • Price: $29.95
  • Pages: 336
  • Carton Quantity: 22
  • Publisher: University of California Press
  • Imprint: University of California Press
  • Publication Date: 9th January 2012
  • Trim Size: 6 x 9 in
  • Illustrations Note: 10 b-w photographs
  • ISBN: 9780520274488
  • Format: Paperback
  • BISACs:
    HISTORY / Europe / General
    HISTORY / Historiography
    HISTORY / World
“No other living historian approaches the range of [Ginzburg’s] erudition. Every page of Threads and Traces, his latest work to appear in English, offers an illustration of it.”
– Perry Anderson, London Review Of Books
“This is a brilliant text, the product of a scholar of rare breadth and knowledge.”
– Ben McDonald, University of Melbourne, Melbourne Historical Jrnl
“Surprising pace, intellectual range, and learned discourse is typical throughout the book. . . . Artfully constructed essays.”
– Raymond Grew, University of Michigan, Jrnl Of Interdisciplinary History
“Ginzburg’s range is remarkable . . . rich in references to and insights about diverse historical perspectives.”
– Publishers Weekly
“A collection of essays by the profoundly original, intellectually wide-ranging, Italian-Jewish historian Carlo Ginzburg . . . an illuminating collection of chapters, deftly translated from the original Italian by Anne C. and John Tedeschi.”
– Benjamin Ivry, Forward
“These essays humanely and generously explore the question of how history ought to be written.”
– Jonathan Beckman, The Literary Review
Carlo Ginzburg is retired from Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa (Italy). He is the author of numerous books that have been translated into English including The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller.
List of Illustrations
Introduction

1. Description and Citation
2. The Conversion of the Jews of Minorca (A.D. 417–418)
3. Montaigne, Cannibals, and Grottoes
4. Proofs and Possibilities:
Postscript to Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre
5. Paris, 1647: A Dialogue on Fiction and History
6. The Europeans Discover (or Rediscover) the Shamans
7. Tolerance and Commerce: Auerbach Reads Voltaire
8. Anacharsis Interrogates the Natives:
A New Reading of an Old Best Seller
9. Following the Tracks of Israël Bertuccio
10. The Bitter Truth: Stendhal’s Challenge to Historians
11. Representing the Enemy:
On the French Prehistory of the Protocols
12. Just One Witness:
The Extermination of the Jews and the Principle of Reality
13. Details, Early Plans, Microanalysis:
Thoughts on a Book by Siegfried Kracauer
14. Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know about It
15. Witches and Shamans

Notes
Index