The Impact of History

One of Sandler's main goals in writing this book is to help readers understand how history has the power to impact the present. Specifically, he looks at six major events in 1919 and charts their impact over the one hundred years between them and the time of his writing. Understanding history is essential to understanding, not only where we have been as a culture or society, but how that past has directly shaped our current reality. Sandler's emphasis on this theme is clear from the words he uses in the introduction and conclusion: "[these events] teach us that the current events holding our attention right now are always preceded by history" [...] "We can look back at these moments and track these movements as they evolved during the following one hundred years to learn that the arc of history is long and varied and gives the trials...