Books: Progress Is Necessary

WHAT IS HISTORY? (209 pp.)—Edward Hal left Carr—Knopf ($3.50).

"I often think it odd" said one of the characters in Northanger Abbey, "that history should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention." How much of it is invention, how it should be invented, and to what end, is the subject of this dazzling display of witty wisdom by one of the world's top historians. Professor E. H. Carr of Trinity College, Cambridge, originally put together his thoughts in the form of six lectures, delivered a year ago to his...