When studying history, follow these important guidelines:

• Learn all you can, not just about what happened, but also about what led up to it.
• Seek to understand the thinking of the times. Do not blame the people of a past era for not knowing pertinent information we know today, especially information they had no way to learn.
• Remember that we have hindsight, and they did not. Some even possessed a lot more foresight than we tend to believe.
• Look beyond surface meanings and consider implications and repercussions.
• Consider the worldview perspectives of historical subjects.
• Don’t just observe what people did, but also take note what they didn’t do.

If we will seek to do these things, the lessons we derive from history’s vaults will be far more accurate than they otherwise would.