Well Read Authors Give the Reader a Headache

I wish I would have read something like Nearby History before writing all of those History research papers. My poor note-taking probably made my work much more difficult, evidenced by my looking up every note back in the original text before putting it in the paper. Outdated as some of it is, this is nevertheless a very well-reasoned look at research and writing.

As for "Linking the Past to the Universal," the final chapter of the book, I wasn't as impressed. I felt like I was reading lists of books that the authors have read which exemplify the linking of the past to the universal, but they don't very clearly tell the reader how to do it (unless I missed something.) I guess the whole relationship of personal life to community, and that of community to national history is a good concept to work from, but I was still left not really sure how to do it.