In Defence of History, by Richard J. Evans(Granta, £8.99 in UK)

As a layman in the field, I had assumed that history was in fact doing very well and was in no need of any defence, academic or otherwise. However Richard Evans, a modern history professor at Cambridge, appears to think otherwise and offers a well-argued case for history's continuing relevance to our lives. He scores good points against the "we can never understand the past" school, and he also issues timely warnings concerning our need to keep our system and society placed in some sort of historical perspective. Portions of the book, however, seem rather myopic and smell a little of professional academic-versus-academic debate, even of odium theologicum. This, by the way, is a new and revised edition.