I've read this 2 times now. Both for different purposes and this time around I found a lot of things I wanted to argue about with the author.

So one of my criticism is that it isn't really written for Dutch teachers (which is a dumb point to make, i know). One of the most things I noticed comparing this book to books my fellow countrymen have written, is that we seem to get to the point a lot faster. So while reading this I got fed up many times because of the, at times, lyrical writing. The many examples felt pointless at times.

What I did enjoy is the fact that this book talks about teaching history not from a historian viewpoint. This book could have easily become just another book about something the author know nothing about but still is a bit condescending to teachers because they don't know how to teach history the 'right' way. This book doesn't do that at all. It shows through research how different people look at history and how they dig into it. What students to do in real life and what we hope they would do. At not time I felt the author was talking down to teachers but more like they were sharing their thoughts based on their research.

So while I didn't agree with many things, this book engaged me every time I was studying it. It gave me many good points to take with me into my own research. It even made me think I would want to recreate one of the authors researches to see what the outcome would be in my country. Although that will never happen because what studying this book reinforced to me is: I hate doing research in an academic setting.

I was expecting it to concentrate on the history angle but this book is mostly about teaching. ( )

When I picked up Samuel Wineburg’s “Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts” I was expecting it to be a historiography and was more than a little disappointed to find that it was more focused on pedagogy, the art of teaching, than I was comfortable with. By “comfortable with” I mean interested in. I have the greatest respect for teachers, it is a noble profession, undervalued and underpaid but well outside my sphere of knowledge.
Historical thinking is an issue in the historiographies i read. But the discussion is on how to develop the skill or if it is even possible, not how to get an entire classroom of students to do it. Even getting a room of teens to imagine a world without smartphones, and how different that would make their lives seems like a daunting task. For a scholastic work the book is very readable. The historiographies Wienburg cites are some of the best I have read. If teaching history in primary or secondary school interests you this is the book you want. But I am no teacher so what do I know about it. ( )

It was a good textbook for my clinical history class. I'm not sure that I would have ever thought to read it, without being induced to do so in a classroom setting. But having done so, I would recommend it to any all secondary and college history teachers. ( )

It was a good textbook for my clinical history class. I'm not sure that I would have ever thought to read it, without being induced to do so in a classroom setting. But having done so, I would recommend it to any all secondary and college history teachers. ( )