All History

Many people think of history as boring, irrelevant stories about dead people. If we’re being honest, this is often true.​Historians, however, tend to believe that even the uninteresting parts of the past deserve to be recorded. They know better than anyone that such knowledge is very difficult to recover once lost. There may also be lessons to be learned from them, or at least connections drawn to other events and circumstances. Something as trivial as a shopping list or a newspaper advert from a few hundred years ago can often provide valuable clues that help to prove or disprove some hypothesis.​Not many people study history just for history’s sake, though. Like in many social sciences, the point isn’t always which conclusions you arrive at, but how exactly you arrive at them.​History students become used to thinking in terms of cause and effect, or rather the multiple causes and effects associated with each event. They learn to have an incredible eye for detail, seeing both the forest and the trees, and can research even complex issues fairly rapidly.