The Christian story and the world’s story

I can’t remember precisely when I fell in love with history, but it was surely in the first innings of my reading life.

Granted, this was easier in the days when history was written and taught as, well, history—meaning drama, heroes and villains, great arguments, wars and revolutions, and all that other dead white male stuff. I was fortunate in my third grade teacher, the estimable Sister Miriam Jude, SSND (then a postulant known as Sister Florence); she had sold World Book encyclopedias on the side during her days as a Philadelphia public school teacher, and talked my parents into buying a set. Thanks to the World Book, I was off to the historical races. Then there were Random House’s “Landmark Books,” wonderful history-for-young-readers, written by real historians, not overly dumbed-down, and costing something like $.95 or $1.25 for a hardback. I owned dozens, and read more than a few of them several times. Thus prepared, high school and college history were fun, not drudgery, and to this day, reading good narrative history is a never-failing pleasure. Read more