It may shock some of my readers, who are inclined to think highly of me (whether I deserve it or not), but I am not<\/b> a fan of history.<\/p>\n
I never have been.<\/p>\n
While I looked with fascination at the fashions of bygone eras, was interested in olden modes of speech or transportation, and often envied historical skills in handiwork, I cared nothing for all the names and dates and circumstances and conflicts that make up the study of history.<\/p>\n
I occasionally feigned interest in history so as to take interest in my brother (an avid history buff). But frankly? I didn’t understand the hoopla.<\/p>\n
Oh, I played lip service to the value of history. You know, the whole “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” and “if I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants” and all that.<\/p>\n
But really, I’ve never been a fan of history.<\/p>\n
At least, not until a few months ago when I picked up a copy of Bodie Thoene’s Vienna Prelude.<\/i><\/p>\n
There I read of Adolf Hitler’s “peaceful” annexation of Austria, of Herman Goring and Winston Churchill, of the SA, the SS, and the Gestapo.<\/p>\n
I continued reading and learned of Kristallnacht, of Nazi concentration camps, of the traitorous appeasement prize Britain awarded Nazi Germany by handing over Czechoslovakia. I learned of the narrow passage connecting Poland to the sea–and separating Germany from Germany. I learned of the pogroms and of the falsehood fabricated to justify the invasion of Poland.<\/p>\n
I started to wonder what was true and what was fiction, so involved was I in the story unfolding in novel after novel. <\/p>\n
I no longer cared only about the protagonists. I started to care about the whole story–the story behind and below and around the one created in the imagination of the author.<\/p>\n
I became a fan of history.<\/p>\n
Now I begin my journey into history, fueled by the fiction of an author who cares about fact.<\/p>\n
My life, my outlook has been indelibly changed.<\/p>\n
Such is the power of good historical fiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It may shock some of my readers, who are inclined to think highly of me (whether I deserve it or not), but I am not a fan of history. I never have been. While I looked with fascination at the fashions of bygone eras, was interested in olden modes of speech or transportation, and often … Read more In Praise of Historical Fiction<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[35],"tags":[174,548,549,801,1242],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6693"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}