First of three volumes of essays by Quentin Skinner, one of the world's leading historians.

QUENTIN SKINNER is Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Christ's College.

General preface; Full contents: volumes 1-3; Acknowledgements; Conventions; Volume 1: Regarding Method: 1. Introduction: seeing things their way; 2. The practice of history and the cult of the fact; 3. Interpretation, rationality and truth; 4. Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas; 5. Motives, intentions and interpretation; 6. Interpretation and the understanding of speech acts; 7. 'Social meaning' and the explanation of social action; 8. Moral principles and social change; 9. The idea of a cultural lexicon; 10. Retrospect: studying rhetoric and conceptual change; Bibliography; Index.