I recently ran across an article on my Twitter feed shared by Century Past History (@lienhart85). The article, called “Why I Am a Historian: A Response to Mary Beth Norton,” is by Lillian Guerra, professor of Cuban and Caribbean history at the University of Florida. Compelled to History Guerra explains how studying history was a necessity for her because she wanted to understand the racism she experienced as a Cuban immigrant in the United States.…
Within organizations, there are people who enjoy playing with numbers, and then there is everybody else. Those in the Everybody Else category react to financial statements with a glazed look at best or utter terror at worst. Often, people who feel they don’t have a hope of understanding financial statements are disconnected from the source of the numbers on those statements. The numbers are merely theoretical to them, which makes them difficult to grasp. Here’s…
It feels like I’m stating the obvious, but history teaches all sorts of thinking skills. One of these is that it enhances our ability to see patterns. When you’re just going through your day-to-day life, it’s easy to miss larger patterns, particularly when you don’t compare what’s happening locally to events on a statewide, national or global level. It’s the myopia of living in the now. When you take the time to investigate an historical…