I had yesterday off from work in honor of primary election day, so like a typical American I skipped out on voting. unlike most normal folks, however, I spent my time finished the new book by this guy instead. for those of you who, like me, are terminally dorky and extremely vulnerable to sunlight exposure, I can promise you a read well worth the effort. actually, unless you are (1) dorky, (2) vulnerable to sunlight, and (3) interested in (a) the discipline of history or (b) obscure early modern political thinkers/historians you will probably not enjoy this book. but I enjoyed it so much that while I ran yesterday I left off dreaming about playing soccer overseas and thought about the practice of history instead. having read the book in fits and starts, I'm not sure that I can present its argument coherently and convincingly, so I won't try. instead, here's a brief summary of a minor point I found interesting:

we usually think of history as a progression, where each step can be traced to an earlier step on into the past. each development is thought to build on developments immediately before it. the roots of every event, we believe, lie in events before it. if we wanted to discuss (and this is a horrible example, but I'm struggling for a better one) 20th century American political thought, then we might trace its roots back through the changes of the past 2 centuries to the founding fathers, and then even further to Locke, Rousseau et al. and we imagine that we could continue tracing further into the past ad infinitum. this is generally assumed to be true, but what if it isn't?

one of the most interesting moments in the book is Fasolt's discussion of the transition from medieval to early modern political thought. drawing an analogy to scientific revolutions (see Thomas Kuhn), he makes a compelling case that some historical changes aren't modifications of, but rather wholesale changes in what has gone before. in cases such as the transition from medieval to modern understandings of the world, an old baby and bath water are thrown out together in favor of a new baby with different bath water. the assumptions that characterize the new paradigm are so different from the old that they cannot have any dialogue and therefore the transition ends up being more or less inexplicable.

I could go on, but I'll leave it at this: if the last two paragraphs interested you at all, get a copy of The Limits of History and read it. it's a short and easy read (for an academic book, anyway). if, on the other hand, you skimmed the last two ¶'s and thought to yourself, "BORING!" then you're probably better off forgetting this post and hanging out with your friends or enjoying the oudoors or whatever it is you normal people do.