I've finally gotten around to reading Peter Bellwood's First Farmers, and while reading I've been struck by a question: in twenty years, is a book like this going to be possible? I mean that in the sense of its scope and breadth and its ability to draw between a dizzying number of disciplines, moving fluently from southeast Asia (Bellwood's main area of expertise) to the Near East to Mesoamerica. Bellwood himself is fairly old, and when he was a student it was possible for someone, like him, to have an education primarily in the Classics, then shift focus to southeast Asia later in his career. And he isn't exactly alone in this (although his scope is a tad unusual): Robin Osbourne of Cambridge has published on virtually every aspect of Greek history and society, and Barry Cunliffe has shifted fluidly from Roman military installations to agricultural strategies of Neolithic southeast Europe.

Meanwhile in my own topic it seems like the age of a single dominating monograph (such as Moses Finley's Ancient Economy) is, if not dead, not exactly healthy, and it has been replaced by expansive edited volumes with many contributors. Which is fine, but somewhat limits to potential of a single author.

So I guess the question is, what is the consequence of the (at least what I see) increasingly narrow specialization of scholarship? Are monographs like First Farmers a thing of the past?

So I have a question for the users of AH. What is your opinion on the Sonderweg thesis? I know it's not really vogue in mainstream academia anymore, and historical inevitability is usually treated with the same scorn, but does any one here actually think the theory is useful or partly useful for looking at German history?

How is "history is always subjective" or "history is never absolutely true" viewed these days by historians? I hear it a lot from friends and fellow students, but is it still the common belief with professionals?