Book excerpt: The Student's Companion to History guides students through all the historical concepts, theories, methods and problems confronting those engaged in the serious study of history. It distinguishes between history as action and history as narrative and attempts to illuminate the interplay between understanding and doing. The author covers the nature of history, questions about action and meaning, views of the past, history as discourse, narrative and knowledge, the use of evidence, causation and event, theories of history and also a wide variety of recent theoretical perspectives and schools of thought.