History BA at uni:whats it really like?

How do I do skim a book? Writing an essay and I spending too long reading and making notes on one book and hardly any time on the others!

Intro, conclusion and the relevent chapter (if there is no relevent chapter, ditch the book and find a different one)

It's an art that all history students get down to fine T eventually

Intro, conclusion and the relevent chapter (if there is no relevent chapter, ditch the book and find a different one)

It's an art that all history students get down to fine T eventually

How do I do skim a book? Writing an essay and I spending too long reading and making notes on one book and hardly any time on the others!

Question.
I was reading over my A2 coursework - which I'm told is the closest you will ever get to degree level history within the A-Level syllabus.

Now in terms of conclusions I was a little confused, how do you usually finish? I mean if you have been criticising lots of views, agreeing with others, do you agree with parts of each historian's argument? For example "I agree with points A and B made by Dr. Bloggs, but he overstates C, whereas Dr. Smith has a more correct analysis of event C. Or is it more common to form a new theory entirely based on conclusions from the evidence you have seen? Hope that question makes sense, it did in my thought process...

Ultimately the success of Henry IV’s transition from duke to king can be measured in his legacy. He took control of a kingdom which had suffered hugely disrupting turmoil as the son of a duke, and passed on the kingship of a secure, generally peaceful realm to the popular son of a king. Although Henry IV battled with problems of government and with his own personal health, these two issues helped to create the situation in which his son could create the secure Lancastrian powerbase among the nobles which he had never managed to accomplish himself. His use of the Lancastrian retinue may have caused problems but it was also a key factor in the success of his transition from duke to king and of the transition from the situation at the beginning of his realm to that at the beginning of his son’s. If Henry had not required a hugely expensive retinue in order to secure power than he would not have placed such a strain on royal finances, if he had not replaced Richard II’s royal administrative officials with those of the duchy then the financial crises of his early reign may not have occurred and the subsequent complaints about Henry’s government would not have solidified into a coherent opposition led by his son, and if Henry had felt powerful enough, both politically and physically, to exert a controlling kingship during his reign then the complaints about, and the subsequent overthrow of, his royal government may have never occurred.
As it was, even though there were many negative factors, Henry IV can therefore be said to have managed the family’s transition from dukes to kings successfully; however, his own personal transition was a difficult one – he was partly prevented from being truly successful by important factors outside of his control, namely the lack of political support in the form of magnates of majority age, his debilitating and restricting illness and his position as the ‘wrongful’ heir. He was ultimately successful in that he managed to secure his right to kingship and secure enough support in order to remain king and brush off support for the rightful heir or the ‘false Richards’ which was appearing during his reign, but he was ultimately unable to transition from duke to king in the literal sense, Henry IV firmly remained both in separate forms. By truly amalgamating the structure of the duchy into the royal administration and appropriating substantial funds for his government, Henry V embodies the end-point in the transition of the Lancaster family in the early fifteenth century from being a firmly ducal family to truly forming the basis of the royal family. Therefore, while Henry IV started the transition from duke to king and managed to successfully ride out the storm of his early reign, it was his son who truly took advantage of the situation his father had created and became a king in possession of a duchy, rather than a duke who was trying to be accepted as king.

Sounds quite a bit like the IB programme

Looking forward to studying the subject though.