Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: The Uses and Abuses of History

The Uses and Abuses of History by Margaret MacMillan 2008

History is something that has happened and cannot be changed! Oh yeah? The Uses and Abuses of History by Margaret MacMillan is a compilation of 8 lectures that examine the importance of history and the voluntary and involuntary biases that exist while history is being recorded. The culture of the time and the geographic location of an event influence how it is recorded;e.g., an Iraqi would describe the war going on in his country quite differently from an American. Biases can also be deliberate and world leaders have been known to falsify and conceal facts. As recently as the 1990s, history was manipulated in what used to be Yugoslavia. Subsequent discoveries sometimes can change our knowledge about the past. Bones discovered in Washington State have thrown earlier theories of North American settlement and migration into doubt. Because Dr. MacMillan is Canadian, many of the examples she gives are Canadian; many within our memory. Reading this book will perhaps make us more skeptical, but also more discerning in sorting out what we need to know.