A few years back I had a heated discussion with a family member about "revisionist history." I was accused of being one of those wacky liberals who just doesn't understand that, well, history is
history. History doesn't change.
I brought up the point that as new information is discovered, interpretations of events change.
That didn't matter.
What I find ironic is that this individual reads a lot of history, books that are current, and shares them so that I and others can read these history books too.
Revisionist history.
1776 shed an interesting light into the character of George Washington - a book I borrowed; and a collection of letters written in the 20th century certainly offered different perspectives of many events - a book borrowed from me.
What reminded me of this conversation was reading a
New York Times book review of “Refugees and Rescue: The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1935-1945,” which includes the following (emphasis is mine):
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s legacy has been slid back under the microscope recently as his efforts to pull the country out of the Great Depression are scrutinized. Now a piece of his foreign policy is also being re-evaluated in a soon-to-be published book that upends a widely held view that he was indifferent to the fate of Europe’s Jews, and asserts that new evidence shows that the president pushed for an ambitious secret rescue plan before the war began.
Revisionist history is what makes history so interesting.
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