When I was a book editor, I had many frustrating conversations with historians. I always pushed for more speculation when the facts seemed to point clearly in one direction; they invariably resisted. They were worried about the appearance of bias or overreach. I never won the argument.

So I enjoyed Samuel Moyn's wonderful review essay, "Bonfire of the Humanities," which takes up historians' worry over the the "crisis in history" and the discipline's struggle to make history matter. Moyn thinks the tendency of academic historians to shy away from interpretation and theory is to blame: "Historians generally have been most pleased with their ability simply to tell the truth?as if it were a secret to be uncovered through fact-finding rather than a riddle to be solved through interpretation." That leaves the "facts," he argues, to be used by "a wide variety of suitors." Moyn wants more thinking in history and believes it is necessary in the effort to "make the past practical"?to find meaning in history. Without that, historians are subject to the very fickleness they seek to avoid. Perhaps they would do better, at least, to admit it.