Does history have to be only about the past? "History" refers to both a subject matter and a thought process. That thought process involves raising questions, marshalling evidence, discerning patterns in the evidence, writing narratives, and critiquing the narratives written by others. Whatever subject matter they study, all historians employ the thought process of historical thinking. What if ...

Historians cannot resist violence.* Not simply because of a voyeuristic interest in the dramatically lethal, but also because many of the most vexing questions about the writing of history converge in the crucible of violent events. Historians are attracted to the subject because they hope that it might tell them something about the fundamental problems in their discipline: questions about caus...

historians' interest in death has been highly selective. None has yet given us a broad survey, grounded in the history of ideas, of how the medical profession's attitudes towards death and the treatment of the dying has been congruent with or divergent from those of other educated and professional groups such as judges and priests. Moreover, we also know little about how the practical and ethic...