History is a lie. Or, rather, a complex galaxy of truths, half-truths, exaggerations, and downplayings that together form a narrative. We don’t write histories because we want to record what really happened; we write them in order to provide ourselves with a meaningful story. We write history because we, as humans, have a fundamental need for meaning in life. We yearn to make order out of chaos, we feel we have to derive positive significance from the hardship and the trials of the everyday. In this sense, history, far from being an accurate record of reality, is an escape from...