America Needs its History - Today!

A recent advertisement in The Economist described History Today as the magazine that 'looks to the past with the present in mind'. This is a simple and sensible notion, and one that has driven this magazine now for forty years. It is also a notion that sets it apart from the contemporary 'historical' competition. This latter state of affairs is sad, especially in a country like the United States, where the public appetite for history seems to grow in direct proportion to the increasing velocity of social and technological change. Over the last twenty-five years, historical societies and museums have proliferated, to say nothing of the commercial success of period romances in a variety of media.