Since its first publication in 1961 E.H. Carr's What is History? has established itself as the classic introduction to the subject. Ranging across topics such as historical objectivity, society and the individual, the nature of causation, and the possibility of progress, Carr delivered an incisive text that still has the power to provoke debate today. For this fortieth anniversary reissue, Richard J. Evans has written an extensive new introduction that discusses the origins and the impact of the book, and assesses its relevance in the age of twenty-first century postmodernism and epistemological anxiety.