Good history is a question of survival. Without any past, we will deprive ourselves of the defining impression of our being.

I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films.

History is malleable. A new cache of diaries can shed new light, and archeological evidence can challenge our popular assumptions.

I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now.

You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living.

Hey, this has been said before over the past century or so. But there's a survival instinct going on that is demonstrated on a small scale here.