ABSTRACT
History is about the achievements, challenges, failings and mysteries of our lives. Using stories to provide glimpses into the past, historians help us to understand what it means to live at a particular place and time. They offer us guidance about what to value, what to avoid, how to spend our time and how to make sense of our world. Contrasting the past with the present, historians focus on the context associated with people, events and issues in an effort to explain the human experience. Some historians see that their job is to bring an authentic recounting of the past to life through the crafting of accurate narratives that are based on the most relevant historical evidence. Others maintain that while historical evidence is created in the past, we can only evaluate this evidence in the present. What this means is that we cannot comprehend the past as it actually was; at best we are able to understand aspects of the past from a contemporary perspective.
