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7.

Where are we heading?

This book consists of essays on master historians including Thomas Babington Macaulay; Edward Gibbon; Thomas Carlyle; Jules Michelet; Alexis de Tocqueville; and other topics. The author underlines the importance of Marx's artful use of language, Carlyle's gift for capturing the flow of history in time, Gibbon's humor and his creation of a benevolent conspiracy between the reader and himself, Macaulay's ability to propel inert facts into motion, and the literary artistry of other great historians. The great historians created suspense, balanced background and foreground, and enabled readers to feel like actual participants in, as well as observers of, events large and small -- and at times acted as prophets and sages, opening up to their readers fresh, sometimes radical, views of the world and of man's place in it. The author describes what he sees as the threat to the art of narrative history brought on by the complexities of social history, and parodies the misplaced use of computer techniques in current writings; the works of truly great historians should be, he believes, not only part of a true education but also the source of great and continuous pleasure.