THE BOYS' BRIGADE

Historiography is "the study of the way history has been and is written--the history of historical writing... When you study 'historiography' you do not study the events of the past directly, but the changing interpretations of those events in the works of individual historians. --Conal Furay & Michael J. Salevouris

None of the facts is memorable, because they are presented as one damn thing after another. While they include most of the trees and all too many twigs, authors forget to give readers even a glimpse of what they might find memorable: the forests.  --James Loewen

He who controls the present controls the past.  He who controls the past, controls the future.  -George Orwell

SUBJECTIVE VS. OBJECTIVE.  Objectivity?  It is both an ideal and a lie.  Humans ... can't really be objective.  The best we can do is try to be objective.  Aspire to it.  But we all have our biases.  You can't give an opinion without taking a side.  We try to be fair ... but even something as allegedly absolute as truth can be subjective.  All [writers] do is tell you their truth. --Dan Le Batard
People sometimes let their own experiences filter the way they interpret the events of the past. For this reason it is important that anyone seeking to study the work of another--whether a history, a diary, or even a personal letter--should devote some effort to the study of that person's life. Only then can a student of history effectively judge the work of the historian in its proper light. Was the author trying to make a point? Was he hoping to convince the reader of something? If there is some deeper meaning to the history that someone creates, the key to unlocking that meaning will be found in his past.

Narratives matter -- stories that make sense of the messy realities of the world, that connect cause with effect, that have a beginning, middle and end. We seek to understand [what is going on in the world] by constructing narratives and fitting events into them. But sometimes a narrative is undercut and rendered inoperative by emerging facts. And sometimes a new narrative emerges when facts previously unknown come to light.--Michael Barone