Online:The Book of Memories

A study in three parts, of which the first concerns the past, the second the present, and the third, the future.

Any account of the past is bound to be colored by the perception and motivation of the historian.

Not only is the historian prone to pick favorites, but her judgments are like as not to be colored by the political struggles and overriding concerns of her time, place, and culture.

In histories a figure may be marked a base villain, only to have time and the preoccupations of a new era soften attitudes. So it is that tyrants become saints and great men become monsters, all long after they are dead.

A memory is not wholly impartial either, but neither is it subject to the whims of popular opinion or the vicissitudes of time.

The nearer to the event the memory is recorded, the less time there is for prejudices and preconceptions to take over and reshape the experience. It is for this reason that the great chroniclers turned to runestones….