History is not a bedtime story. It is a comprehensive engagement with often obscure documents and books no longer read - books shelved in old archives, and fragile pamphlets contemporaneous with the subject under study - all of which reflect a world view not ours. We cannot make eighteenth-century men and women "familiar" by endowing them and their families with emotions we prefer to universalize; not should we try to equate their politics with politics we understand. But this is what popular biographers do, and as a result, everything we know about Aaron Burr is untrue. It is time to start over.
-Nancy Isenberg, from the Preface to Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr
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