Quotes from Jeremy D. Popkin

Courses in historiography confront students with the possibility that history, like literature, is about stories and that it necessarily involves philosophical questions, such as how we can actually come to know things.

Although history is concerned with the past, it is conducted in the present.

Fearing that the king would try to quash their decisions, the deputies held an emergency session in the only building they could find that was large enough to accommodate them, the king's indoor tennis court. There, they swore the dramatic "Oath of the Tennis Court," pledging not to cease meeting until they had given France a new constitution.

The most extravagant idea that can arise in the head of a politician is to believe that it is enough for a people to enter a foreign territory with military force to get them to adopt our laws and our constitution. No one likes armed missionaries,