The Past Is Still Another Country...

I didn't expect to find that much genealogically relevant in Tony Judt's Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Press, 2005). But it's hardly ever a mistake to read someone who can say something this obvious and make it new -- make you really realize it for the first time:

"Throughout recorded history, most people in Europe -- as elsewhere in the world -- had possessed just four kinds of things: those they inherited from their parents; those they made for themselves; those they bartered or exchanged with others; and those few items they had been obliged to purchase for cash, almost always made by someone they knew." (p. 337)