History

In doing so, they create narratives that explain the past in ways that make sense in the present. Inevitably, as the present changes, these narratives are updated, rewritten, or discarded altogether and replaced with new ones. | Ideas about history have changed over time. It might seem that writing history should be straightforward it's all based on facts, isn't it? | Historians must make decisions about what to include and exclude, how to organize the material, and what to say about it. | In theory, yes, but the evidence surviving from the past is vast, fragmentary, and messy.