On Tue, 18 May 1999, Tavia wrote:
> Not to open up a can of worms, but as a historian these Time covers
> always bother me because they rely so much on the "Great man" theory of
> the past. Why believe there was any one person who most influenced the
> course of history? Why assume that category even makes sense? I don't
> personally see Hitler's "hoof print" all over the globe--I don't think
> any one person, really, is that 'important.' "Men [sic] make their own
> history, but they do not make it just as they please in circumstances
> they choose for themselves; rather they make it in present
> circumstances, given and inherited." -- Marx, "Eighteenth Brumaire"
Hear, hear. To quote (from memory, I'm afraid) Nobel laureate Elias Canetti from *Crowds and Power*,
"For every great name in history a hundred others might have been
substituted. There is never any dearth of men [sic] who are both
talented and wicked."
--C. G. Estabrook