“A history of unalloyed certainties is dangerous because it invites a slide into intellectual torpor. History as truth, issued from the left or the right, abhors shades of gray. It seeks to stamp out the democratic insight that people of goodwill can see the same thing and come to different conclusions. it imputes the basest of motives to those who view the world from a different perch. It detests equivocation and extinguishes 'perhaps', 'maybe', 'might', and the most execrable of them all, 'on the other hand'. In a world devoid of doubt, the truth has no hands.”