There is a new study out--unhappily I caught it quickly and cannot cite the source--which concludedthat the key ingredient in the making of good "teachers" was akin to voodoo!  If i recall, it seemedto suggest that there was an X factor wherein some people have it and others do not.  Disturbingly, italso allowed that this cannot be taught!  Great teachers can make even dull books sing and weavea mesmerizing story from dull and dusty facts.  I was lucky enough to have some and perhaps you did too--my first was Amelia Adolph--sophomore year--"wonder woman and Circe combined".Think of it as an ability to dance well or Calvin's concept of "the elect".  If you run across the articleplease let me know as I have mentally scourged myself for not tarrying to make a note.The article was in Newsweek--Google teachers and voodoo and you should get it

The key words are ?all the support and assistance in its power?.  When they signed the pact in August of 1939 the British knew full well they could provide little or nothing in the way of military support.  It was hoped that concluding a treaty would cause Hitler to back down since it was widely regarded at the time that British intervention because of Belgium in 1914 had caused the failure of the Schleiffen plan and they hoped for something similar in this case.  The treaty was a line in the sand if you will rather than presaging some expectation of actual military assistance.  I do not see how the claim that Poland was betrayed can be substantiated unless you assume that Poles were na?ve enough o think that several British divisions could be magically teleported to Poland in the case of attack.  The Baltic was essentially a German lake for most of the war anyway.In the end it is academic because the treaty did not hold Hitler back and guaranteed Britain?s involvement in the war.  In one sense the treaty can be considered a failure because it did not achieve what it intended, stopping Hitler....My curiosity was aroused because it seems apparent that the British were hoping that Poland would cometo some kind of agreement with Germany over Danzig and the Corridor which would satisfy HerrHitler and avoid a war. The Poles proved to be quite stubborn and unreasonable.  My wife is Russian and Polish and I have a deep understanding of "stubborn"  Neither the Poles or the British understood that the Austrian gentleman was convinced that destiny was guiding his hand and that he was absolutelydetermined to go to war in the east-- no "agreement" would be acceptable.  Once Hitler had seenthe actions of the western powers over the debacle of the Czechoslovakian guarantees, his appetitehad been whetted to the point where only a conflict would satisfy him.In any case my understanding of this question has been improved.  Thank you for your assistance.

Coronation in 800ADWell the mechanics might be generally agreed upon, but we could spend years discussing the real meaning of the event.  It is the same for many seminal events in history.  Take one that almost everyone agrees upon--the outbreak of WWII.  A bit closer to our time than 800 AD and lots of research material available.  The British call it Hitler's War so you know where they are coming from-BUT__it is not really that simple.Here is a short list of various historians who have different views of the subject and whose use of narrative vs. factually based prose is evident.Langer and GleasonNuremburg Tribunal documentsCharles TansillHenry L. RobertsL,B. NamierHerman Mau and Helmut KrausnickMaurice BaumontAJP TaylorHR Trevor-RoperAdolph HitlerWarning:  Reading these guys may lead to headaches, nausea, sleeplessness and itching as they all havediffering points of view, they all have varying abilities as writers, some suffer from poor translation andothers just seem to be nasty people.

Donald Baker:I rest my case.The gauntlet for the art-science debate was arguably set by Leopold von Ranke, the 19th Century historian who called for history to be written "as it essentially was". To accomplish this, the primary sources had to be speak for themselves and the historian's role was in objectively sewing the patches of the primary source quilt together into a grand narrative. Bias, subjective judgement and the "art" of history would thus be removed and history became empirical, a science of man's past. The problems here are obvious. First, a historian, with his or her inherent interests, worldview, understandings and culture, is a subjective being. Different historians will derive different, even potentially conflicting meanings, from the same primary source. There may be too many primary sources available to the historian, forcing the historian to decide which ones are most useful for his or her purposes. Again this involves subjectively choice, based on interests or intent. Secondly, primary sources are not photons, molecules or metatarsels but the products of human beings who are partial, whose viewpoints are their own, who may have ulterior motives for putting pen to paper, and who are reliable not as CCTV cameras but by being themselves. This is not to say there are no facts in history because there are: the event/s called the French Revolution did start in 1789. But the grit of history - the hows and the whys - are teased out not empirically but critically, using judgement, skill and creativity and the product, though not necessarily a scientific truth, can offer poetic truth.WillyD

Wow–you are harsh.  Very few people I knew or know would seriously consider “History” to be a"science".  It is a social science at best along with sociology and political science.  All of which usevarious techniques of the "pure" sciences, but not of which can validy claim to be scientific eitherin their methodologies or their conclusions.  This is what I was taught, what I experienced andwhat I believed.  Chemistry, mathematics, physics and biology may claim to rest under the aegis ofscience, but we poor worshippers of Clio have had to find other quarters.  Von Ranke will always berevered, but he did not change the game.I am reading Robert Merry's  A Country of Vast Designs which has lots of well researched facts, meetsthe normal definition of concise and appears to be objective.  Reading it is difficult because his does not entertain me as he writes.  This is important as I have always had a short attention span and I expectto be excited as well as informed by my author.