The past may not change, but our history of it does. History—the narratives that historians write—is relevant to us because historians are influenced in their selection of what and how to write about the past by their engagement with issues and problems that confront us today.

Since the fourth edition was published, I have retired after forty-one years of teaching at Whittier College. Although I no longer have students with whom to try out ideas and draft revisions, I do remain an active schola

it is to point out that history is living and relevant to current concerns, not the “dead hand of the past,” as some might see i

that humans are changing, overwhelming, or displacing other global processes of nature as well, on scales never before seen in human history.