It has been said, rather too often, that in the past year we have been living through history. But we live through history all the time, as long as we live at all — we don’t have much choice. Even the supposedly boring 1950s were history. We suffered the very real threat of nuclear war, and Senator Joe McCarthy’s attack on democracy, the Korean War, the polio epidemic and the arrival of rock and roll. It wasn’t dull, I can tell you. I was there.