Clio’s Wars: How We Interpret Our Past Will Determine Our Future

When national identity fractures and ideologies rise, historical nuance gets lost in the rubble.

An 1846 illustration of the Smithsonian Institute, which was created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” The Institute has recently come under fire for its anti-American ideology. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In his Introduction to his 11-volume “The Story of Civilization,” Will Durant wrote: “Civilization is not something inborn or imperishable; it must be acquired anew by every generation, and any serious interruption in its financing or its transmission may bring it to an end. Man differs from the beast only by education, which may be defined as the technique of transmitting civilization.”

Teacher and historian Wilfred M. McClay delivers a similar warning more bluntly in his “Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.” “A culture without memory will necessarily be barbarous and easily tyrannized,“ he writes, ”even if it is technologically advanced.”