Appears to be a summarisation of its content without critique.

Funnily that's what I found with Braudel himself: describing what happened not why.

Regardless, a bloody good read.

To quote Feynman: explaining how something happens makes the why irrelevant.

Feynman did not deal with humans. Knowing that Lincoln was killed with a bullet does not lessen the value of why he was killed.

The how can often be determined. The why is often conjecture after the fact. History is written by the victors.

Well, we had years of more claims than evidence. Somebody had to do the hard labor for sake of future historians.

I hope someday democracy has recovered to the point where we can centrally plan, and then we can experimentally historical theorys.

You can't explain why until you have a really good description of the what.

Although I’m not a huge fan of Cowan this was a good call. Braudel will change your perspective.

You can clearly see the influence of Bloch who really could be credited with the creation of modern history and historiography. He took a view of complete engagement with history, joining the resistance being, in his mind, itself being part of the historical process (he wrote his last book on the run). His death at the GP hands of the gestapo was tragic.

I hadn't heard of these books before, though skimming the summary, I'd very much like to read them -or the first volume at the very least.

But the content and size of the volumes strikes me as the sort that requires continuous engagement to be of most use.

If anyone's interested in forming a book club around this, feel free to email me at hn(αt)crocodiletears.cc

Braudel's three tomes are a monument of historical writing. It's too bad they're also far too expensive, at least in French. There hasn't been a reprint in 20 years.

He is so widely studied that there are often copies in used bookshops.

Reminds me of Vaclav Smil

What a fantastic article.