This chapter discusses the role and nature of the historian’s work, the professionalization of the craft, and why it is essential to a free society. Influenced by the German historian Leopold von Ranke, the American Historical Association founded in 1884 embraced the scientific ideal and a mission of achieving objective truth about the past. The possibility of objectivity, however, was questioned after World War I by Carl Becker and Charles Beard and ultimately by nearly all historians. The most extreme critique came from postmodernists who argued that historians are not uncovering the past, they are inventing it. History is a form of literature. Since the 1960s, the historical discipline has acquired many other new approaches besides postmodernism. Increasingly, it has focused its attention on studying groups in society estranged from power and influence, individuals and groups previously neglected and oftentimes voiceless. New questions of culture, mentalité, and subalternity have drawn historians’ attention. Among the new categories, gender was the most prominently pursued.