Explain why the authors believe that the view that "history is what happened in the past" is, in their words, a "profoundly misleading" view of history. do you agree with their view? 2. how do the authors define the word history?

The authors believe that the view of history is what happened in the past misleading because there are so many different perspectives and facts about what may have or actually happened. It supposes that historians must return to the past through the surviving records and bring it back to the present to display as “what really happened”. This task is too difficult and I mostly agree on this as well. History is not entirely what happened in the past because it is just impossible to know exactly.

History cannot depict what really happened in the past unless we can go back in time. Being courier to the past is not enough. The authors define history as not “what happened in the past”, but rather, the act of selecting, analyzing, and writing about the past. Is it something that is done, that is constructed, rather than an inert body of data that lies scattered through the archives.