History, etc.

[David Casseres]

The current New Yorker (6/5/2006) has a review by Adam Gopnik of a
new, revisionist history of the French Reign of Terror, by David
Andress.  From Gopnik's review:

"Read Gibbon on the destruction of the Alexandria library by the
Christians, or E.P. Thompson on the Luddites – not to mention Robert
Conquest on the Gulag – and suddenly old murders matter again; the
glory of the work of these historians is that the right of the dead to
have their pain and suffering taken seriously is being honored.  It is
not for history to supply us with a sense of history.  Life always
supplies us with a sense of history.  It is for history to supply us
with a sense of life.

"Or death."

The boy can write.  I find this passage resonates well with both
Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon.