Author Description

"Carlo Ginzburg's brilliant and timely new essay collection takes a bold stand against naive positivism and allegedly sophisticated neo-skepticism. It looks deeply into questions raised by decades of post-structuralism: What constitutes historical truth? How do we draw a boundary between truth and fiction? What is the relationship between history and memory? How do we grapple with the historical conventions that inform, in different ways, all written documents? In his answers, Ginzburg peels away layers of subsequent readings and interpretations that envelop every text to make a larger argument about history and fiction. Interwoven with compelling autobiographical references, Threads and Traces bears moving witness to Ginzburg's life as a European Jew, the abiding strength of his scholarship, and his deep engagement with the historian's craft"--Provided by publisher. "This book is a translation of historian Carlo Ginzburgʼs latest collection of essays. Through the detective work of uncovering a wide variety of stories or microhistories from fragments, Ginzburg takes on the bigger questions: How do we draw the line between truth and fiction? What is the relationship between history and memory? Stories range from medieval Europe, the inquisitional trial of a witch, seventeenth-century antiquarianism, and twentieth-century historians."--Provided by publisher.