DAVID MAYERNIK
LTD.

Historians, inevitably, have a point of view. And it is right to be mildly suspicious of what that point of view is. But there are those scholars who seem (though how can we really know?) to be able to access the past on its own terms, to be able to operate almost like a native in that foreign land where “they do things differently”

Readers were meant to analyze these [narratives], in order to equip themselves with the prudence needed in the active life, and then to emulate or avoid emulating the actions they depicted when faced with similar circumstances.

At some level every culture asserts a view of history that fits its self-perception. And for some time there has been a strong undercurrent of suspicion of history’s value as model or lesson.