History is the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence. … - Jill Lepore

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Why are the architects of the family-values agenda so eager to punish into the next generation? What is being served by seeking, quite literally, a tooth for a tooth?

Jill Lepore

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.

Argument, Art, Evidence, Past, Risks, Writing

Same Author Quotes

When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood NOT as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left.

Civilian, Defense, Failure, Left, Littles, Self

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

Empathy, Imagination, Requires, Reverence, Study

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

Argument, Everything, Interesting, Long

Mainly, the more faddish and newer stages of life are really just marketing schemes. Tweenhood. The young old. The quarter-life crisis.

Faddish, Mainly, Marketing, Quarters, Stage

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

Disease, Epidemiology, Side, Sides