The study of history is vital to an understanding of our contemporary world, for we can hardly understand the present moment if we don t develop an awareness of how it came to be. Historians pursue every place, period, population, and process under the sun, from antiquity to the near present, and on these journeys to the past they explore the connections that make up the complexity of human society from individuals to institutions, from economics to religion to recreation, and from formal politics to family life.