I did projects on Champlain coming up the St. Lawrence River and on Henry Hudson cast adrift in the bay that now bears his name. And I read dozens of historical novels: Rosemary Sutcliff on Roman Britain and G. A. Henty on British heroes, though my all-time favourite was Ronald Welch's 'Knight Crusader.'
— Margaret MacMillan
When I first read Barbara Tuchman's 'The Guns of August' in the autumn of 1963, it was as though history went from black and white to Technicolor.
It is true that large parts of the world have not had to endure state-to-state wars for decades. The majority of the world's nations have also been spared the scourge of civil wars, although many have known violence from revolutionary insurrection.
The 1898 annexation of the Hawaiian Islands merely formally recognized what had long been American domination.
I tend to think history is more a branch of literature than science.
History does not produce definitive answers for all time. It is a process.
Managing the relationship with a giant neighbour has been central to our foreign policy for more than a century. Trade and investment, as well as people, have flowed back and forth across the border, and the U.S. is, by far, our biggest trading partner.
Our interest in history always reflects our own times.
The passion for the past is clearly about more than market forces or government policies. History responds to a variety of needs, from greater understanding of ourselves and our world to answers about what to do.
In my view, Germany could and should have made reparations for its aggression in World War I - but was the risk of renewed war worth forcing it to do so?
Nigel Farage, the leader of the U.K. Independence Party, is a true populist; Senator Bernie Sanders, the former U.S. presidential candidate who campaigned for Hillary Clinton after losing his battle for the Democratic Party's nomination, is not.
I still remember with gratitude a series for children on everyday life where we learned about the games children in other times had played and the food they ate.
Nuclear proliferation has never entirely been brought under control, and the arsenals of nuclear powers contain bombs far more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
As history reminds us again and again, wars are not always made on the basis of rational calculations: often the contrary.
American diplomats worked closely with the League of Nations. The United States used its considerable influence to settle some of the outstanding issues left over from World War I, and Washington took the lead in negotiating naval limitations in the Pacific.
We must do our best to raise the public awareness of the past in all its richness and complexity.
Canadians see the Americans as cousins. We love the same sports: Canadians are crazy about baseball and basketball, and our beloved game of hockey is played all over the U.S.
In the 19th century, we didn't much like the loud annexationist voices south of the border or American support for Sinn Fein adventurers who thought, by seizing the Canadian colonies, they could force Britain out of Ireland.
I wish we could see understanding the First World War as a European issue, or even a global one, and not a nationalistic one.
How can even the best novelist or playwright invent someone like Augustus Caesar or Catherine the Great, Galileo or Florence Nightingale? How can screenwriters create better action stories or human dramas than exist, thousand upon thousand, throughout the many centuries of recorded history?
Many in the English-speaking world came to agree with the Germans that the Treaty of Versailles, and the reparations in particular, were unjust, and that Lloyd George had capitulated to the vengeful French.
Political orientation is unimportant in populism because it does not deal in evidence or detailed proposals for change but in the manipulation of feelings by charismatic leaders.
As a child, I had loved history because it showed so many alternative worlds.
The range of weapons at the disposal of military powers is terrifying in its capacity to damage the world and its inhabitants, perhaps even to bring humanity's long story to its end.
Theodore Roosevelt's policy to build a two-ocean navy confirmed that the old-style isolationism of the founders had not survived the modern, increasingly globalized world.
It took a world war, between 1914 and 1918, to draw the United States into a deeper and more sustained relationship with the wider world.
The Great War was nobody's fault - or everybody's.
A large part of Canada heads for Florida, California, and Hawaii in the winter to get away from the snow.
I'm always wary of the lessons of the past. There's a lot of past out there, and you can draw whatever lessons you want.
For many human beings, an interest in the past starts with themselves. That is, in part, a result of biology. Like other creatures, humans have a beginning and an ending, and in between lies their story.
History can be helpful in making sense of the world we live in. It can also be fascinating, even fun.
Nominally left- and right-wing populists differ primarily in their choice of which 'others' to exclude and attack, with the former singling out big corporations and oligarchs, and the latter targeting ethnic or religious minorities.
The word 'populism' was everywhere in 2016. Political leaders claiming to speak for the people have achieved significant victories in Europe, Asia, and, with the election of Donald Trump, the United States.
