... an enthralling investigation into the ways in which the background of historians affected and affects the way they present the past. Using such lively material as autobiographies (for which historians have had a predictable fondness), letters and the comments of contemporaries, he brings to life Herodotus, Tacitus, Muhammad, Machiavelli, Voltaire, Gibbon, Marx and Churchill as well as the modern tele-historians Mary Beard and Simon Schama. Black history and 'herstory', novelists and journalists, Bible stories and military campaigns, Putin’s revision of Russian history: all pass under his consistently entertaining scrutiny. There are memorable anecdotes galore.

Sprawling and wildly ambitious, idiosyncratic and also consistently readable and engaging, Making History dives deep into the way history-driven scholars and artists — from Burns to Shakespeare to Herodotus — have shaped the collective memory of humankind. Championing both famous and largely forgotten historians as well as storytellers, filmmakers and photographers, Cohen’s volume offers memorable anecdotes and reasoned judgment as it explores themes including the foundational mythos of the Old and New Testaments.

Cohen is English, and was the director of two London publishing houses, biographical facts that, to apply his own test, might account for (a) his willingness to treat journalism, historical fiction, and television documentaries on a par with the work of professional scholars, since, as a publisher, he is interested in work that has an audience and an influence, and (b) the Anglocentrism of his choices.

... a substantial, ambitious and consistently readable inquiry into the history of history.

... an enlightening, one-of-a-kind account of humanity’s chroniclers from Greek times to the internet age.

Cohen's range is admirablly broad.

Though the biographical minutia threatens to overwhelm, Cohen makes a persuasive argument that history is created by historians as much as by politics, war, economics, and other forces, and convincingly shows how 'the rivalries of scholars, the demands of patronage, the need to make a living, physical disabilities, changing fashions, cultural pressures, religious beliefs, patriotic sensibilities, love affairs,' and other human concerns have shaped the understanding of the world. The result is a fascinating and finely wrought history of history..

This wide-ranging account hits most of the predictable points in a traditional, occasionally entertaining introductory-level course on the writers of history in Western civilization.