Download or read book The Birth of the Past written by Zachary S. Schiffman and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2011-11 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today we automatically distinguish between past and present, labelling things taken out of context as "anachronisms." The author shows how this tendency did not always exist, and how the past as such was born of the perceived difference between past and present. He takes readers on a grand tour of historical thinking from antiquity to modernity.