This important and stimulating volume seeks to defend the value of historical understanding in the face of social-scientific and especially postmodernist criticisms of historical method and the usefulness of history for understanding the present. Clark argues that modernism and postmodernism can both be explained historically; that we cannot emancipate ourselves from the past; that historical identities are deeply rooted; and that the interplay of ideas in the public arena frequently disguises these truths, but does not abolish them.