A discussion of the acerbic debate on whether historical writing can justly claim to recapture the truth about the past, or whether historians, whatever their claims, are the prisoners of their own time and the slaves of the language they can never fully control. The author offers a framework for evaluating the writing of historians, from the origins of historiography in the time of Herodotus to the postmodernists of today. The final chapter features interviews with two modern practitioners of history as they think out loud on what it means to be a historian today.