In recent decades the discipline of history has experienced an unprecedented expansion of its range of subjects. As rich as the new diversity is, it may seem to sacrifice disciplinary coherence to sprawl. More striking, however, is the discipline's capacity to retain its grip on the interpretive and explanatory agenda that continues to make history a distinct way of understanding the human condition. Intellectual history has developed in much the same way. Not so long ago it was regarded by many as an endangered species, its natural habitat having been laid waste by social and cultural historians who rejected its elitism and by historians of ideas who preferred a habitat free of historical clutter. This prognosis notwithstanding, intellectual history has re-emerged as an expanded but still focused disciplinary enterprise, anchored in the belief that texts and the discourses in which they are embedded are multiple points of entry into human creativity in its profuse variety of historical forms, and that their study is essential to understanding the nature of cultural life and the meaning of civilization itself.