Mark: To convey an understanding of past events, a historian should try to capture what it was like to experience those events  For instance, a foot soldier in the Battle of Waterloo knew through direct experience what the battle was like, and it is this kind of knowledge that the historian must capture  Carla: But how do you go about choosing whose perspective is the valid one  Is the foot soldier' s perspective more valid than that of a general  Should it be a French or an English soldier
Your approach would generate a biased version of history, and to avoid that, historians must stick to general and objective characterizations of the past
questions whether Mark accurately describes the kind of historical writing he deplores