Bibliographies for the People

Historians carry our expertise with us where we go. This was a lesson we both learned as we began to engage more directly with wider publics. Part of that lesson was about adjusting the tools we use—not just the prose style of what we say to various groups, but also how we communicate our expertise. To that end, we each found success in moving away from the traditional bibliography and toward something more conversational in recent trade books.

If we want a public audience to read and understand our trade books, we must think about the citation practices we use. Misagh Laghaei/Unsplash. Image cropped.

We took as our model our wide-ranging experiences in the classroom, where we know how to calibrate to our audience and adjust the tools we use. We, for example, would teach the same material differently in a middle or high school classroom than we’d approach an introductory-level class at university. And yet again, we would do something still different in a graduate seminar. Our adaptability is a mark of professionalism, not an absence of intellectual rigor. In the classroom, a good syllabus or reading guide can curate the content of a more traditional bibliography while also introducing theoretical considerations or overarching challenges to students. In the same way, an annotated (or discursive) bibliography in a trade book can guide the reader through the “need-to-know” of citation practice, helping them select the reading most relevant to their interests while also familiarizing them with the methodologies of formal scholarship.

Matthew wanted to use bibliographic essays as an invitation for readers. In The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe (Harper, 2021), he and co-author David M. Perry concluded with a “Further Reading” section. Chapter by chapter, across 19 separate bibliographic essays, they introduced readers to general overviews, cutting-edge scholarship on specific topics, and, perhaps most important, primary sources in translation. As Matthew and David wrote at the beginning of that section, “Our suggestions for further reading are intended to allow you to dip your toe into a vast ocean of work. Its currents have comforted and terrified, warmed and chilled, but its mysteries have always fascinated us. What we have here is just the beginning of a journey.” For example, the essay for chapter 16 (dealing with the Black Death) tries to convey the potential scope of the source material, while explaining to the reader how much the field has changed just in the past decade or so. They suggested David Herlihy’s The Black Death and the Transformation of the West (1997) but cautioned about its conclusions, then pointed to Monica H. Green’s pioneering article in the American Historical Review and why one needs to understand the Black Death as a global pandemic. Overall, this Further Reading section conveys enthusiasm for further learning, the necessity of relevant expertise to navigate it, and an acknowledgment of the scholars whose research the monograph built on and engaged with. This type of discursive bibliography is, in other words, an invitation to the reader to explore the past with us as historians.

Rhiannon took a similar overall approach but with some crucial differences that demonstrate how many options we have as historians. The annotated bibliography in All Roads Lead to Rome: Why We Think of the Roman Empire Daily (Aurum, 2025) is also in a discursive format, has a chapter-by-chapter structure, and includes an explanatory note at the start. In curating these suggested readings, Rhiannon chose to include only materials that are publicly accessible, using examples of relevant work by the scholars whose academic research hers was inspired by and in conversation with. This section included podcasts, public essays and blogs, open-access translations of primary sources, and trade books or books available for free online. This was complemented by a traditional bibliography, also chapter-by-chapter, of “formal” academic work by those same scholars and others she had built on. Rhiannon’s approach made explicit her approach to citation ethics, both as a general principle in the introductory section and with individual acknowledgments in each chapter section. As she wrote in the book, her annotated bibliography allows her “to properly acknowledge those who helped me find my way and as a place for interested readers to start exploring.” This encourages the reader to understand scholarship as a collective endeavor, with multiple ways to participate, and welcomes them into a scholarly community.

“What we have here is just the beginning of a journey.”

Our respective editors were supportive of our decisions to cite our sources in this way. Rhiannon started with informal research, asking about a dozen people of different ages and educational backgrounds what they’d do if they wanted to know more about a topic from a book they enjoyed. They all expressed a lack of confidence in navigating a traditional bibliography (if they understood its function) or an online search, and many said they would prefer to ask someone whose expertise they trusted. That feedback suggested to Rhiannon that her concerns reflected a problem many readers of All Roads Lead to Rome likely share. Matthew (and David) came to their decision for similar reasons, surveying recent comparable trade books and then talking with friends and family. The most common thing people said, when asked what their questions would be if they wanted to know more about a topic, was “Well, where would I start?” So in The Bright Ages the authors decided to do that—to suggest starting places, usually with primary sources. For both projects, we agreed (independently) that this approach actually let us do more with our bibliographies, providing readers with a beginning reading list and pointing them to the wonderful work our colleagues are doing (but often isn’t getting the attention it deserves).

Maybe more importantly though, our discursive bibliographies were—in the case of trade books—an ethical decision. Citation is, as Sara Ahmed wrote in Living a Feminist Life (2017), “how we acknowledge our debt to those who came before.” In academia, we sometimes take this element for granted, because we all (mostly) understand the norms; we know, in other words, the debt implied by the footnote. Our students learn, as they proceed through their studies, that citation is more than a box-ticking exercise, a way for them to show their work. In the same way, we as scholars understand how to cross-reference from footnotes or endnotes to a bibliography to find further reading for ourselves, and we teach our students the same. But these techniques are not always known to all readers of a trade book. Surely, then, our research ethics should push us to find ways to articulate these practices in our books for the nonexpert reader, just as we would in our classrooms?

Our bibliographies were—in the case of trade books—an ethical decision.

There is a clear demand for publicly accessible history across a variety of media: trade books, podcasts, YouTube channels, TikTok reels, blogs, Reddit forums, and more. People want to learn about the past. More than that, they want to engage with the stuff of that past, the detail of material culture and literary texts left by people and societies long ago. They want to think about long-term trends and big-picture narratives, and to connect that knowledge to the contemporary world around them.

A traditional, nonhierarchical list of reading, most of which is not available without access to a university library, does not help them do this. An alphabetical-by-last-name list of sources doesn’t help our publics navigate the ever-increasing number of resources we have to study the past. And certain practices will be unclear to the nonexpert reader. For example, many academics cite work that they are fundamentally disagreeing with (academically or ethically), and even work that their own disproves. But when nonexperts have not been trained how to cross-reference such bibliographic entries with the relevant passages in the text and associated footnotes, we risk sending them down the garden path. This ethically compromises us as scholars and is unfair to our readers as well as our colleagues.

Not every trade book should embrace discursive bibliographies as we and many colleagues have done (see, for example, Mary Beard’s SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome [Liveright, 2015] and Naoíse Mac Sweeney’s The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives [Dutton, 2023]). There are as many options for gently guiding an engaged public audience through the methodologies of history as there are citation formats in academic publishing. We are arguing, however, that we should engage more deeply with this range of options and normalize alternative approaches. A historian’s toolbox has many different tools in it; let’s use more of them.

We also believe that thinking more deeply about this practice will make us better scholars. Taking the time to explain which sources are better for what use and why pushes us to reconnect with our material and consider it from new angles, to think reflectively and reflexively about our scholarly choices, and to explicitly articulate our citation ethics. It reminds us that good research is always collaborative—and it conveys that message to our readers, expert and nonexpert. In curating accessibly formatted research by academic scholars, Rhiannon’s annotated bibliography offers an expanded idea of what constitutes “scholarship.” In articulating the choices that underpin their selection of further reading and associated guidance, Matthew and David’s reference essays lay out the choices that academics make every day—consciously or subconsciously. The process of writing these discursive essays allowed us all to consider our ethics and practices, and we hope it helps other scholars to do the same.

Let’s make sure we invite everyone to explore the past with us, and make them feel welcome by offering them guided tours. After all, we want everyone to share in our histories.