Peter Burke, A Social History of Knowledge. Volume II. From the Encyclopédie to Wikipedia

‘I wish I knew a history was a history,’ remarks Gertrude Stein in A Geographical History of America. That might be because ‘history is the state of confusion between anybody doing anything and anything happening’.(1) An oblique way of starting a review of a social history of knowledge, perhaps – but indispensable for knowing how history knows knowledge and what the knowledge history knows reveals about historical knowledge. If anything could, this book, A Social History of Knowledge, covering 1750–2000, (that is, to just 12 years ago), a sequel to the author’s A Social History of Knowledge. From Gutenberg to Diderot (2000), should produce an answer.