History

History is my favorite subject.  I actually have a Ph. D. in history! (My thesis subject was the western Chinese treaty port of Chongqing in the early 20th century, and its British community.) I also organize a history discussion group through meetup.com .  We talk about history books and screen DVDs of historical movies. (This week we're showing Cabaret!)

I was talking to Margo from Russia in that group, and she told me that when they teach history in Russian schools they start with the Greek historian Herodotous and his famous book about Persia and its wars with Greece! (I actually read that book a few years ago.) Here in Canada, at least when I was young, they don't start teaching old world history till high school; before that it's just Canadian history.

I've actually read parts of Edward Gibbon's seven-volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  Someday I'm going to return to it and read the whole thing!

People who don't know history are prisoners of their own time. (The United States has a very dramatic, entertaining history for a fairly young nation, yet that subject interests few Americans!) The more we learn of history, the more familiar our ancestors look.