Every book sounds authoritative
You cannot tell the careful ones from the confident ones.
Courses
See what you would learn
Understand how historians decide what actually happened.
A course on historical method for readers. It covers how sources are compared and weighed, what gets left out and why, and how to tell a well-supported account from a compelling story, so you can read history with judgement.
Open Cadence on the App Store, type the sentence when it asks what you want to learn, and answer a few setup questions. Free to start. Android testers can request early access.
Type this when Cadence asks what you want to learn
I want to understand how historians decide what happened. Teach me how to compare sources, notice missing perspectives, and separate evidence from a compelling story.
Change any word so it fits your situation. The course is built from what you type and a few setup questions.
- Best for
- History & culture
- Prerequisites
- None. Bring the situation you have.
- Course length
- 7 to 30 lessons, sized to your goal
- Lesson pace
- About 10 minutes a day
- Format
- Read it, or play the audio
- Access
- Available on the App Store, with early features and Android testing access
Before the course is built
Setup asks about your situation first.
Lesson 1 opens on the moment you describe, and the examples use your role. For this request, expect questions like these.
- What history do you read: popular books, documentaries, news framed as history, or academic work?
- Have you noticed two accounts of the same event that could not both be true?
- Do you want to read better, or to research something yourself?
Right for now
If any of this sounds familiar, start here.
Two histories contradict each other
Same events, opposite meaning, and no way to adjudicate.
You suspect you are being told a story
The narrative is too clean and you would like to know what it cost.
Course arc
Where the course goes, in order.
Cadence writes the lessons for you, so the exact path follows your answers. This is the ground a course built from this sentence covers.
01 / 06What a historian does
Questions, sources and argument, and why history is not just what happened.
Sources
Primary and secondary, bias and survival, and how evidence is weighed.
Silences
Who did not leave records, and how historians work around the gap.
Interpretation
Why the same evidence supports different accounts, and how to compare them.
Narrative
What a good story does to evidence, and how to enjoy one without being captured.
Reading with judgement
Applying the questions to a book, film or claim you meet this week.
What changes
What you will be able to do, and what you will stop believing.
You will be able to
Evaluate sources
Ask who made a source, when, why and for whom.
Notice absences
See whose perspective is missing and what that does to the account.
Judge an argument
Separate evidence from interpretation, and both from narrative polish.
Ideas this course corrects
History is what happened
History is an argument about what happened, built from incomplete evidence. That is its strength, not a flaw.
Bias makes a source useless
Every source is biased. The bias is information once you know how to read it.
Course questions
What to know before you start.
Is this a fixed course?
No. Cadence builds the course when you type the sentence and answer a few setup questions, so the lessons follow your situation. This page describes what a course built from this request covers. You see the whole path before Lesson 1.
Who is this course for?
A course on historical method for readers. It covers how sources are compared and weighed, what gets left out and why, and how to tell a well-supported account from a compelling story, so you can read history with judgement. It sits under History & culture in the Ideas & discovery part of the library.
Do I need any prior experience?
No. Setup asks what you already know and where you want to use it, and the course starts from there. Bring a real situation if you have one; the examples are built around it.
How long does it take?
Courses run 7 to 30 lessons of about 10 minutes, sized to what you asked for. One lesson a day is the intended pace, and you can go faster. Lessons can be read or played as audio.
Does this course award a certificate or degree?
No. Cadence is for practical self-learning and does not award accredited degrees or professional certification.
Start today
Type it, answer a few questions, open Lesson 1.
The sentence to type
I want to understand how historians decide what happened. Teach me how to compare sources, notice missing perspectives, and separate evidence from a compelling story.
Open Cadence on the App Store, type the sentence when it asks what you want to learn, and answer a few setup questions. Free to start. Android testers can request early access.