112 THE PUBLIC INTEREST / WINTER 2005 make. Historians worthy of the name have an ability to live imaginatively in the past as fully as they do in the present, ,In doing so they are chameleon-like, but not for the purpose of camouflage and deceit. Only by such ab- straction can they become knowing insiders in worlds that no longer exist. In this regard, historians are people with dual or multiple citizenship, only their second and third countries are past civilizations and distant ages. Who needs history? The historian's natural enemy is people who know, and want only to know, their own immediate culture, which they accept as a supreme measure of humankind. It is the civic duty of historians to remind their fellow citizens that they are neither the first nor necessarily the most interesting people to have walked the earth, and that na- tions that lead their lives as if they were have often suf- fered terrible consequences. Today, the distant past is a neglected vital resource. History. fills comparatively fewer shelves in local book- storęs and libraries, and the history that is most promi- nent there is about familiar subjects within our contempo- rary culture. Of the 16 books on the mid June 2004, New York Times nonfiction best-seller list, only two were his- tory, both well-worn American (Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton and Cokie Roberts' Founding Mothers), while Dan Gordon's record-breaking misty fiction, The Da Vinci Code, led all categories of adult reading by wide margins. History majors in American colleges and universities over- whelmingly show a similar sensibility. Over the last three years only 20 percent of history majors at Harvard Uni- versity enrolled in a field-specific tutorial in premodern history (ancient, medieval, or early modern history). For the other 80 percent, the world began in the more com- fortable nineteenth century. A major reason for such provinciality is the pervasive belief that the past is a benighted world of superstition and prejudice, or, less threateniịng, a world of fantasy and romance, in either case no proper guide for an emanci- pated modern age. "Bunk" was Henry Ford's famous word

112 THE PUBLIC INTEREST / WINTER 2005 make. Historians worthy of the name have an ability to live imaginatively in the past as fully as they do in the present, ,In doing so they are chameleon-like, but not for the purpose of camouflage and deceit. Only by such ab- straction can they become knowing insiders in worlds that no longer exist. In this regard, historians are people with dual or multiple citizenship, only their second and third countries are past civilizations and distant ages. Who needs history? The historian's natural enemy is people who know, and want only to know, their own immediate culture, which they accept as a supreme measure of humankind. It is the civic duty of historians to remind their fellow citizens that they are neither the first nor necessarily the most interesting people to have walked the earth, and that na- tions that lead their lives as if they were have often suf- fered terrible consequences. Today, the distant past is a neglected vital resource. History. fills comparatively fewer shelves in local book- storęs and libraries, and the history that is most promi- nent there is about familiar subjects within our contempo- rary culture. Of the 16 books on the mid June 2004, New York Times nonfiction best-seller list, only two were his- tory, both well-worn American (Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton and Cokie Roberts' Founding Mothers), while Dan Gordon's record-breaking misty fiction, The Da Vinci Code, led all categories of adult reading by wide margins. History majors in American colleges and universities over- whelmingly show a similar sensibility. Over the last three years only 20 percent of history majors at Harvard Uni- versity enrolled in a field-specific tutorial in premodern history (ancient, medieval, or early modern history). For the other 80 percent, the world began in the more com- fortable nineteenth century. A major reason for such provinciality is the pervasive belief that the past is a benighted world of superstition and prejudice, or, less threateniịng, a world of fantasy and romance, in either case no proper guide for an emanci- pated modern age. "Bunk" was Henry Ford's famous word