Effective historical research and writing requires CRITICAL THINKING and CRITICAL READING.  The purpose of ANALYTICAL (or deep) reading is to see through the surface of a book or article to its INNER WORKINGS.  A simple recapitulation or summary of the work's contents as the author organizes it does not usually provide the reader or anyone with whom you discuss the piece an adequate understanding of the contents as a set of arguments or a narrative embodying a cluster of presuppositions.  Six categories of analysis should be considered essential tasks of critical reading.

I.  Author's goals and achievements:

What are the chief goals of the work announced by the author in the preface or introduction to the book or the first few paragraphs of the chapter or article?  Does you analysis of the goals and themes agree with the aims as expressed by the author?  Do the author's explicit goals (if they are stated) and his/her major themes or arguments match both in their LOGIC and in the EXPOSITION as represented in the book's or article's organization?  In short, does the author prove his/her arguments and how well, and by what means?

II.  Morals, Uses, Politics:

What are the author's moral and political judgments and how doe they influence the text?  For what political, moral, intellectual, or other purposes does the author argue and shape the material?  Philosophical, religious, and professional concerns can shape material as much as economic, political, or other interests.  Even an explicit denial of political or moral ends may have moral and political consequences.

III.  Models of Society, Economy, Polity:

What does the author presume about the nature of social, economic, or political arrangements in the society being examined?  How are social groupings and their relationships determined?  Does the society have classes as well as groups?  What does the author argue explicitly or implicitly about the structures of power and the means of social control or domination?  Does the author presume consensual agreement or conflict is natural among social groups?  Is the author a pluralist who believes in the wide distribution of power throughout society or an elitist who sees a small integrated group dominating the society?

IV.  Plots, Stories:

From whose viewpoint does the author tell the story or make the argument?  To what extent does the author presume progress, decline, cyclic, or other basic modes of comprehending time through history?  What story or logic does the author employ to move his/her arguments or narrative forward?  Of what larger story or history does the text or interpretation presume its story to be a part?  Why does the author begin and end the history when she/he does?  (Do the beginning and end points build in certain biases in the making of the argument?)

V.  Models of human nature and causation:

Does the author presume that human beings change their ways and outlooks easily or are they fundamentally hostile to change?  To what extent do changes stem from willed human agency?  Does change come largely unanticipated -- from larger transpersonal forces?  In short to what extent are people constrained by their culture, society, economy or times, and to what extent are they free to create what they will?  To what extent to LATENT factors (those unknown to the people in the time under study) contribute to historical change?

VI.  Use of evidence and proof:

Does the author have all the kinds of evidence needed for all parts of his/her case as explored in the preceding topics?  Are the basic facts presented by the author determined more by the evidence used or by the author's premises and presuppositions about human nature, models of society, or political and moral uses?  Does the author, in other words, use the types of evidence she/he needs to prove his/her case in the larger sense of the argument?  Or, is much of the evidence presented in the book or article beside the point or points actually argued or implied?  Historians regard evidence as crucial in their own work.  Therefore you should read their works to determine HOW authors use evidence, and whether the right kinds of evidence are employed to prove the argument or arguments.  (For example, evidence about intentions does not prove that such activity occurred, or, if it occurred was done for the reasons intended).