Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends I know.

Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, Robert Lincoln bought a nice ski lodge.

In these fast and fickle times, it’s nice to know that there are some things you can always count on: the enduring brilliance of the last page of The Great Gatsby; the near-religious harmonies of the Beach Boys’ “California Girls”; and the lifelong friendship of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

Jesus and Lincoln, Moses and Jefferson can seem so long gone, so unbelievable, so dead.

But when I am around strangers, I turn into a conversational Mount St. Helens. I'm dormant, dormant, quiet, quiet, old-guy loners build log cabins on the slopes of my silence and then, boom, it's 1980. Once I erupt, they'll be wiping my verbal ashes off their windshields as far away as North Dakota.

History is full of really good stories. That's the main reason I got into this racket: I want to make the argument that history is interesting.

Relics are treasured as something close to the divine.