Readers of my previous articles here will have noticed a heavy focus on history: historical periods as intriguing analogies to current events; distorted history as propaganda; history as warning; perhaps above all, the question of who gets to control our history.
Contrary to the common belief, Americans are not less historically conscious than Europeans; in fact, the reverse is true. The Franco-Prussian War or the Italian wars of unification were roughly contemporaneous with the American Civil War, yet the former events are largely relegated to academic works, whereas the latter continues to create an unending flood of popular overviews, biographies and unit histories — with Abraham Lincoln being the most written-about figure in American history.
