It's funny, because I am very much a person who can tell you why history is useful, and it is never the history in the sense of knowing the narrative. It is the history in the doing of history that is useful.

But when it gets right down to it, the doing of history is how I see the world. chilperic once said he was not surprised I changed fields from Lit to History, "because you read like a historian. You can't help it."

That's it, really. I can't help it.

(oh, and also, if you haven't read that John Arnold Very Short Introduction, it says many of the same things, in yet another elegant way)