Forget history? No, I don't think that's possible. I had an interesting conversation with someone the other day where I said that I don't believe people ever have entirely original thoughts or ideas. Everything in our minds was put there by something we've seen, touched or smelt, thus we cannot think beyond this and be original. What we do is pull these things apart and reassemble them to make them seem like new ideas. We're all plagerize our past experience when thinking of something new, it's our only souce of inspiration, after all. The most foward thinking idea I have is looking through all of history to put together the most appealing ideas and designs to create a totally new design concept. This is actually what I try to do with my house and garden. In the garden itself I have bought a large number of broken black granite pillars and statues in the ancient greek style (cheaply as they were broken) and arranged them in an exact replica of a ruin I once visited which was quite beautyful in shape and form. While the layout and style is three thousand years old and the polished black granite is as old as the earth itself, the combination is almost ultra modern. Many people find it bizare, it's really futuristic with such a strong historical feel that you can't place it as anything before it. I even used yougart to encourage lichen and moss which made the mirror like granite seem to have been there years, despite it being so high tech looking.

What browser are you using; IE, Opera, FireFox, etc. Then it just depends on how long it keeps the history. For IE click View>>Explorer Bar>>History Pooh Bear

You can live with imperfections much easier if what you are living with is clean, well maintained and workable for you. Sometimes it's hard to see that when you are up close working on a house and everything seems to be torn apart and needing some kind of repair. Imperfections in walls and woodwork fade away once furniture and other homey touches are there to fill the voids. Houses, old or new are not perfect. Sometimes in the rush to fix up our houses we forget that they have a history to them. When we take the time to learn that history I think it makes us better caretakers. We understand why certain things in the house are as they are. We have a house here in town with no windows on one side. Most folks would have gone and put windows in the side without them. Nope, the current owners have left it alone because they discovered the reason for the house being like that. Seems the house was built by a doctor. His wife was a busy body and a huge gossip. His office was the house next door. He didn't want her sitting by the window all day taking notes on who came and went so he had the house built with no windows on the side his office was on. A thing they could easily changed BUT before they made the choice to change they did the research. Knowing your homes history can change how you see and feel about those imperfections.

Veer I bring up this because I came across this article this morning in The Economist that made me recall your search. (IÂm not sure if it fits your quest properly) I cut and paste the whole article because is not available on the web unless you are a subscriber Hoping youÂre still interested. If not forgive me for having you wasted so many bits (I seem to remember there was another person searching a new book about American History for her/his father , but I may be wrong about it.) grelobe America's Three Regimes: A New Political History. By Morton Keller The American colonies were not like those in other parts of the world. Royal governors came to plunder but found that American planters and merchants could not easily be bossed around. Sir Danvers Osborn, a Briton who was made governor of New York in 1753, was so upset when the New York assembly refused to support him in the style he felt his rank deserved that he asked: "Then what am I come here for?" At which point he hanged himself. Morton Keller, a history professor at Brandeis University, likes to take the long view. Other chroniclers of American history talk of "ages" (Reform, Gilded, Jazz etc) that lasted no more than a decade or so. Mr Keller sees continuity where others see helter-skelter change. "Americans like to think of themselves as a people eternally young. But the reality of our public life is very different," he writes. The constitution, rarely amended, is nearly a quarter of a millennium old. America's legal system and political parties are among the most durable anywhere. Even in the revolution against King George and his pesky emissaries, Mr Keller sees not a clear-cut break with the past but "the product of nearly two centuries of colonial experience", in which the settlers took old-world ideas of liberty and expanded them. Mr Keller has somehow crammed the entire political history of the United States, from the first colonists until nearly the end of George Bush's presidency, into a single slim volume. He is breezy without being glib, and original without being eccentric. He divides American history into three regimes (as in ancien régime): "Deferential-republican", running from early colonial times until the 1820s; "Party-democratic", from the 1830s to the 1930s; and "Populist-bureaucratic", from the 1930s on. In the first regime, Americans clung to European notions of hierarchy even as they created a new andÂfor the timeÂunusually democratic form of government. Ambitious young men during this period, such as George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, adopted the manners of the elite. Hamilton even fought a duel. This was an aristocratic pastime, but as Mr Keller observes, America democratised it somewhatÂHamilton's opponent came from snootier stock and would never have fought him had they both lived in Europe. In the second regime, the franchise expanded and politicians started to boast of having been born in...