History is the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence. In the writing of history, a story without an argument fades into antiquarianism; an argument without a story risks pedantry. Writing history requires empathy, inquiry, and debate. It requires forswearing condescension, cant, and nostalgia. The past isn’t quaint. Much of it, in fact, is bleak.

Republicans were more pro-choice than Democrats up until the late 1980s.

Disrupt, and you will be saved.

Stages of life are artifacts. Adolescence is a useful contrivance, midlife is a moving target, senior citizens are an interest group, and tweenhood is just plain made up.

Germ theory, which secularized infectious disease, had a side effect: it sacralized epidemiology.

Folklore used to be passed by word of mouth, from one generation to the next; thats what makes it folklore, as opposed to, say, history, which is written down and stored in an archive.

A great deal of what many Americans hold dear is nowhere written on those four pages of parchment, or in any of the amendments. What has made the Constitution durable is the same as what makes it demanding: the fact that so much was left out.