Since 2000, when it was made into one of the major themes at the International Congress of Historical Sciences in Oslo, global history has become a booming field in many historical circles around the world. Few have attempted to argue, however, that not only have histories in many parts of the world formed a range of connections, demanding examinations from a global perspective, but that the same perspective can also be applied to comparing and analysing the various ways in which history has been conceived and written in the world. This book, written by Daniel Woolf, Professor of History and Principal and Vice-Chancellor at Queen's University, Canada, is thus a welcome addition. In fact, it is the first book written in English that offers a comprehensive survey of the traditions and transformations of historical writing around the world, from the beginning of time to the present. While it is therefore Woolf's first attempt to produce a work on such a scale, he is one of the most qualified and best prepared scholars to do so. Having published several books in the field of historiography, Woolf has also been the general editor of the two-volume A Global Encyclopaedia of Historical Writing (1998) and, more recently, general editor of the ongoing multi-volume Oxford History of Historical Writing (2010–), four volumes of which have appeared to date.

Compared with Woolf's previous works in the study of historiography in general, and global historiography in particular, this book has a different aim and audience. As he writes in the preface, ‘The purpose of this book, in brief, is to provide a history of history, suitable for undergraduates, faculty members seeking a relatively concise introduction to the subject and the interested general reader’ (p. xix). The word ‘relatively’ is important here because, with nearly 600 pages, it is quite a read for many undergraduates. If the book is hardly ‘concise’, it is definitely ‘comprehensive’, a word that Woolf has not used in the preface but one that is evident to readers simply scanning the table of contents. Divided into nine chapters after the introduction, the book begins the story in the ancient Near East about 4,000 years ago and continues – travelling a vast space, as its title demands – all the way to the end of the twentieth century.

This coverage, offered in a single volume, is indeed unrivalled by any of its competitors. Markus Völkel's Geschichtsschreibung: Eine Einführung in globaler Perspektive (2006), for example, does cover the traditions of historical writing on a global scale from ancient to modern times. But it essentially treats what Völkel considers to be the major traditions around the world, such as those in the Middle and Near East, in South and East Asia, and in Euro-America. By comparison, Woolf offers descriptions of such regions as Thailand, Vietnam, and even Myanmar in Asia, Sweden and Spain in Europe, and Ethiopia in Africa, which readers would not usually expect to see in a survey book like this. In other words, the book's broadness in coverage (which is shown not only in the text itself but also, very ingeniously and usefully, in the ‘text extracts’ and ‘subject boxes’), is not only unprecedented but, in my opinion, also difficult for anyone to surpass in the foreseeable future. To cover these many areas, it is inevitably hard to read all the historical works in their native tongue. Yet if what Woolf has provided is mainly based on secondary sources, it is written in a way that demonstrates his in-depth research and thorough understanding.

The book's comprehensiveness is definitely its first merit, and it reveals Woolf's deep commitment to a global presentation of historical writing. In his preface, Woolf explains that he decided to write this book because he intends to exercise ‘a conviction that students ought to be exposed to the “historical cultures” of other civilizations than their own’. He strongly believes that ‘there is a story to be told about the development of historical thought, historical writing and the modern historical discipline, and that it relates directly to some of the larger movements of world history (in particular the global engagement of different peoples and cultures over several millennia)’ (p. xix). This commitment to global history and historiography is rare among many historians even today, as the number of people interested in historiographical study is small in the first place. In addition, since the late nineteenth century, when the study of historiography began to receive attention from historians, the primary concern has been to summarize and evaluate the works of historians in Euro-America. This Eurocentric emphasis has led to many of its practitioners looking down upon, if not downright ignoring, the practices of history elsewhere. If some of them attempted a comparative approach, such as J. H. Plumb, a Cambridge historian who authored The Death of the Past (1969; 2004), their purported goal seemed to create an ‘other’, against which the European historical consciousness was pitted and extolled. In Plumb's case, the ‘other’ was the Chinese tradition of historical writing, which, incidentally, had been preserved as arguably the largest body of historical literature before history became a profession in modern times. If Chinese historiography was no match for the European experience, other cultures fared worse. The people in Africa, for example, were considered as history-less, as were the South Asians, despite their splendid and superb cultural achievement in many other areas.

Viewed in this context, we can probably appreciate more fully what Woolf has done for all of us as members of the historical communities across the world. He has demonstrated a genuine interest in all historical cultures in the world and made a painstaking effort to present them fairly and truthfully. I cannot delve into the many fascinating details found in the book, but suffice it to mention just some of the chapter headings to prove Woolf's effort. For instance, Chapter 6 deals with historical writings mostly in the eighteenth century, in which the European Enlightenment would have figured centrally in other texts. But as its heading, ‘Progress and history in the Eurasian Enlightenment’, shows, Woolf instead calls attention to the accomplishments in regions and continents in addition to and outside Europe. The following chapter, as one might expect, is devoted to the nineteenth century. Dubbed ‘the century of history’ before, it was customarily the place to celebrate the accomplishment of European historians in writing national history, arguably the most representative genre in modern historiography. However, that chapter's heading reads ‘The broken mirror: nationalism, romanticism and professionalization in the nineteenth-century West’. While giving due credit to the boon that professionalization has brought to the study of history, Woolf also reminds us of the detriments occasioned by the alliance between history writing and national governments. Indeed, if history writing did advance markedly in the nineteenth century, what historians scored was perhaps only a Pyrrhic victory.

In sum, this is a valuable book, marking a worthwhile attempt to re-imagine and re-present the study of historiography. It deserves to be read not only by history students taking courses on historiography and historical methods but also by all practising historians interested in knowing more about their profession.