What we have lost, and what we desperately need to reclaim, is a different mode of cognition, a historical sensibility . This is not about memorizing dates and facts. It is, as the historian Gordon S. Wood describes it, a “different consciousness,” a way of understanding that profoundly influences how we see the world. It is a temperament that is... See more

What we have lost, and what we desperately need to reclaim, is a different mode of cognition, a historical sensibility . This is not about memorizing dates and facts. It is, as the historian Gordon S. Wood describes it, a “different consciousness,” a way of understanding that profoundly influences how we see the world. It is a temperament that is... See more

our deep-seated human desire to make sense of a complex universe through tidy, airtight explanations.

The academic discipline of history has, in recent decades, largely failed in its public duty. It has retreated from the consequential subjects of statecraft and strategy, seeing them as unworthy of scholarly pursuit. The rosters of tenured historians at major universities show a steep decline in scholars engaged with questions of war, peace and... See more