Just the Facts, Ma’Am

History is a curious subject. Just looking at the word you might conclude that it is a contraction of "his story". There are some famous sayings about it as well:

• Winston Churchill: "History is written by the victors."
• George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

(I remembered the quotes well enough to track them down on the web. I know who Winston was, and George sound familiar, but I really can't claim to know anything about him.)

Anyway, I was reading an essay in the New Yorker by Jill Lepore at lunch today about this topic and I came across this:

"Historians and novelists are kin, in other words, but they’re more like brothers who throw food at each other than like sisters who borrow each other’s clothes."

I enjoy stories, be they books or movies, that ring true. For the sake of the story, I am willing to overlook any number of flaws, if they do not interfere with the essential truth. Sometimes it is a little hard to decide just what is an "essential truth". More often it is just a feeling. Remember 1984? There was the department of revisionism where history was being rewritten on a daily basis. There is evidence of this going on in Communist countries like China and North Korea even now. And I don't know how many times our official American history has been rewritten just during my lifetime. Mostly this has been to the detriment of the US image, but often to the detriment of other countries as well.

I never really understood the war with Japan until I read "Flyboys" by James Bradley.