Editors’ Note: A Decade Later

As History of the Present enters its tenth year of publication, moves to a new press, and acquires a new look, it seems a good moment to take stock. Taking stock is not just a way of measuring inventory; it is for us a genealogical reflection. What does it mean to be a journal of critical history at a time when the status of facts has been called into question, when what counts as true is taken to be “political” and nothing more? In the current circumstances, some historians argue, the public role of our discipline is simply to correct the lies that politicians spew forth; that, they argue, is criticism enough. We disagree; we think there is always more to the writing of history than the correction of errors of fact. There is inevitably an interpretive perspective, a set of premises about the relationship of past, present, and future...