of the Oxford English Dictionary have come up with twelve, believe it or not. We don’t have to bother with all the nuanced shades of difference that the OED sets out, but we do have to be alert to one critical distinction that is absolutely foundational to everything that follows in this book. In popular parlance, when we refer to history outside of an academic setting, we almost always mean “the past itself.” We debate the best sports teams in history, question the checkered history of a political