ABSTRACT
The past is a very popular topic of discussion. Marks of popular interest take various shapes, such as visits to museums and historic sites, historical books, magazines, websites, movies and documentaries, festivals, commemorations, genealogy, and many other fields. In 1998, Robert Rosenzweig and David Thelen conducted a survey on the presence of the past in American everyday life (1998). One reason for the popular interest in the past has been, according to them, that people turn to the past “as a way of grappling with profound questions about how to live” (1998, 18). The past can help us interpret who we are and why we do things. We use the past to shape our identities, but for other purposes as well, such as, for instance, a source of entertainment. The past has been one of the main sources of games (e.g., Trivial Pursuit) and television quiz shows (e.g., Jeopardy; Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?). Given this popular interest in the past, one might assume that the public widely acknowledges the authority and expertise of historians.
