Ferenc Morton Szasz was a lifelong student who became a professor of history at the University of New Mexico. As a one-year appointment at the Albuquerque campus evolved into a forty-year career, Szasz glimpsed the predictable unpredictability that he would eventually discern as one of history’s most enduring and elusive traits. The connections and consequences along the way forged a truly exceptional life and career. Szasz’s interests, he insisted, were the ideas of the people … and how they shift over time. In an era when historical scholarship became increasingly specialized, he pursued an eclectic array of research interests and challenged his doctoral students to do the same. The ten selections of Szasz’s writings that are the primary content of this volume balance insights into history’s great moments with attention to events and details often overlooked by more conventional historians.