Empire Podcast: Lenin and The Rise of the Bolsheviks

ᔥu/atomicnotes in Who uses a card index? Top historians, that's who at r/Zettelkasten

At the start of a recent episode of the Empire Podcast (the one on the Bolshevik Revolution), historian William Dalrymple reveals that when he began to write his first history book, The White Moghul, he had no idea how to do it, so he called the eminent historian Antony Bevor, who invited him round for a lesson in using his own method - a card index. Dalrymple says he's been using a card index ever since.

Then the podcast co-host, Anita Anand says she learned this approach from William and she too has been using it ever since.

By my rough calculation, the card index lesson would have taken place about 1998-2000, so Antony Bevor probably used index cards to write his great books on Crete in WW2 and on the Battle of Stalingrad, among many others.

So that's three highly successful popular historians using a card index to research and write significant and best-selling non-fiction books.