Here is one of the great paradoxes of modernity. The more the world changes, the more important history becomes. A few scholars like to say that the past is a foreign country, but they could not be more mistaken. The past is our country. Our own kin lived there. The memory of what they did is becoming ever more important as part of our lives.
— David Hackett Fischer (From Washington’s Crossing)
Fischer is absolutley the best of our academic historians.