“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”74 But remembering isn’t enough. History is an exercise in self-deception if we get the wrong messages from it. Only through the hard work of looking beyond the first-order causes—particularly when we’re afraid of what we might see—do we begin to learn from history. Treating only the f

History, Mark Twain is alleged to have said, does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. We need to learn history’s lessons to increase the odds that the future will improve upon the past.