History is the study of human past documented in written records. Historians recognize past is quicksand with untold stories. History is not just what we think, but what we remember
Carr's lectures were delivered in 1961 during a period of global crisis. Western world was recovering from two world wars and revolutions. Cold war and economic crisis have since intensified
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) was a mathematician who later became a philosopher. His early work focused on logic and mathematics, influenced by Frege. He gave Vienna Lecture in 1935, which became basis for posthumous work
Fernand Braudel was a leading representative of the Annales school of historians. Annales historians were not Marxists, unlike the dominant Marxist French intellectual life. Braudel's interest in material civilization was similar to Marx's historical materialism
Gentile was Italy's official philosopher of fascism (1875-1944). He believed state authority and citizen freedom form a continuous circle. Liberalism broke this circle by setting individual against state. Fascism offers absolute state authority without compromising individual conscience
Acton was a nineteenth-century aristocratic historical pessimist. He believed in free will, God, and metaphysical optimism. His famous statement: "Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely". History was seen as the disclosure of guilt and shame