Reading a Secondary Source

There is a strong temptation in a class to believe that the answers to all the questions are found in the textbook and that the object of the course is to learn the textbook. The following is designed to help you use the textbook more efficiently and effectively.

Three ways to use a secondary source

As a collection of facts

Use a secondary source if you need to find a particular piece of information quickly. You might need to know, for example, when Ghengis Khan lived, in what year the cotton gin was invented or the population of London in 1648.

As a source of background material

If your interests are focused on one subject, but you need to know something about what else was going on at that time or what happened earlier, you can use a secondary source to find the background material you might need. For example, if you are writing about Luther's 95 Theses, you should use a secondary source to help you understand the Catholic Church in the Renaissance.

As an interpretation

Since the facts do not speak for themselves, it is necessary for the historian to make give them some shape and to put them in an order people can understand. This is called an interpretation. Many secondary sources provide not only information, but a way of making sense of that information. You should use a secondary source if you wish to understand how an historian makes sense of a particular event, person, or trend.

Using interpretations

Since the facts do not speak for themselves, it is necessary for the historian to make give them some shape and to put them in an order people can understand. This is called an interpretation. Many secondary sources provide not only information, but a way of making sense of that information. You should use a secondary source if you wish to understand how an historian makes sense of a particular event, person, or trend.
One of the most important tasks in reading a secondary source is find and understanding that particular author's interpretation. How does that particular author put the facts together so that they make sense?

Finding the interpretation

Good authors want to communicate their interpretation. Because the reason for writing a book or article is to communicate something to another person, a good author will make the interpretation easy to find.

In an essay

In an essay, particularly a short one, an author will often state the interpretation as part of the thesis statement. The thesis statement is the summary of what the author is going say in the essay. The thesis statement is usually found at the end of the introductory section or in the conclusion.

In a book

In a longer work, such as a book, the author will very likely have many thesis statements, one or more for each section or chapter of the book. The thesis for the book as a whole will often be found either in the introduction or in the conclusion. The thesis for individual chapters is often found in the first or last paragraph. Topic sentences of paragraphs will also often have important clues as to the author's interpretation.
It is often helpful, particularly if you are interested in the author's interpretation to "gut" a book: Read only the first and last chapters in their entirety; for all of the other chapters, read only the first and last paragraphs. If this is a well written book, this should give you a fairly good idea of the author's point of view.

The importance of the interpretation.

An interpretation is the how a historian makes sense of some part of the past. Like a good story, well done history reveals not only the past, but something about the present as well. Great historians help us to see aspects of the past and about the human condition which we would not be able to find on our own.
Historians often disagree on interpretations
Some facts are ambiguous. Historians ask different questions about the past. Historians have different values and come to the material with different beliefs about the world. For these and other reasons, historians often arrive at different interpretations of the same event. For example, many historians see the French Revolution as the result of beliefs in liberty and equality; other historians see the French Revolution as the result of the economic demands of a rising middle class. It is, therefore, important to be able to critically evaluate an historian's interpretation.