On This Day

The corridors of academe are full of thoughtful people reflecting on essence and understanding. Depending on their own predispositions and the nature of the things they seek to comprehend, they differ in their disciplines or approaches. But the authors of two new books make a compelling case that if one hopes to understand the human condition, one’s place in the world, or who we are and how we have become part of a community, imagined or not, then no discipline is better than history.

Trilby Kent, for her part, was motivated to put pen to paper because history is a discipline in trouble. Very little is taught in our schools, and fewer and fewer university students are choosing the subject as their major. Where it does come up in the classroom, it is fragmented and chronologically disorganized. Historical studies have been eroded over the past several decades by an emphasis on teaching those skills necessary to cultivate “compliant and adaptable workers” for a...