He has chronicled the "height of human knowledge" and the "abyss of ignorance," and wishes "to see the mistakes of their own lives made clear in the light of the mistakes of their successors."

"She claimed, like Job, that there was not only God and the Church to be considered, but the Word made Flesh: that is, the unaveraged individual."
  - Saint Joan.

"She suddenly dashed [a flagon of beer] on the table when Lord Burghley tactlessly used the imperative instead of the subjunctive."
  - Orlando.

A youth full of military toys and foreign books prepared him for triumph against the Swedes in the Great Northern war and modernization of the Russian people against the disinclination of the West.