Today Flows from Yesterday, Without Labels

This post was originally published on the Bookview Cafe blog in 2013.

We humans love our boundaries.  Between nations, between states, between property.  So important to know where you end and I begin, not?

But in history, maybe not so useful.  When I was taking history classes, there was a tendency to teach historical periods and eras, as if the Plantagenets filed out in an orderly fashion one day, the Tudors clocked in, and everything–clothes, art, technology, politics–changed right then.  But...