... letters. The stories they were telling were true, of course, but nonetheless they were telling stories, just as though they were novel-ists, and their job, as they saw it, was to tell their stories ... limit, distort or falsify what is said.More important, they recount only what people found worthy of note about their own age—which may not be what interests us today.” Then, too, even ... preface to his great work] to change tenses or moods, to transpose parts of quotations, to simplify language, and to give free renditions.” If the purpose of history was to tell stories that...