History is a long and endlessly interesting argument, where evidence is everything and storytelling is everything else.

The study of history requires investigation, imagination, empathy, and respect. Reverence just doesnt enter into it.

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.

History is a long and endlessly interesting argument, where evidence is everything and storytelling is everything else.

The world may not be getting better and better, but our devices are getting newer and newer.

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.