What Max Boot gets wrong about studying history

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On Wednesday, Max Boot wrote about the state of history education in the United States. He started off making several good points. History is not as popular as it once was, and, in general, Americans are pretty ignorant about history. He’s also right that understanding the past is important for understanding the present and gives several illustrative examples to back up that point.

But then, he veers off from what could have been a bland but passable column on the good of studying history. Instead, he writes “historians may not want to admit it, but they bear some blame for the increasing irrelevance of their discipline.”

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