Marc Bloch — one of the most distinguished 20th Century historians – is the author of Strange Defeat: A Statement of Evidence Written in 1940. Serving as a staff offi cer, Bloch witnessed the fall of France in 1940 from the front line. This book is so interesting from the methodological point of view, because we are presented here with a historical source created by a historian, who additionally knows how an ideal type of historical evidence ought to be written. This French historian thought that history is also written to give contemporaries lessons on how to avoid the mistakes of the past. This is an important message of Strange Defeat.
Tekst jest recenzją pracy: Violetta Julkowska, Historie rodzinne. Narracje – narratorzy – interpretacje (Poznań–Bydgoszcz: Instytut Historii UAM i Oficyna Wydawnicza EPIGRAM, 2018), 272 ss.
The paper examines the special historiographic evidence: the lost last book by the well-known Polish historian and methodologist Professor Jerzy Topolski entitled “Methodology of History at the Beginning of the 21st Century”. Only its working outline in the form of an extensive table of contents has survived, but this does not prevent the author from making interesting hypotheses as to its meaning.