When we don't learn from our mistakes

Updated On: 22 July, 2012 11:14 AM IST | | Lindsay Pereira

In 2004, the late Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski wrote eloquently about the Greek historian Herodotus's masterpiece, The Histories, while on assignment covering some of the most troubled areas on earth.

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Documenting his approach to reading the classic, Kapuscinski described the act of dipping into it at random and discovering new anecdotes that would alternatively delight, surprise or shock him.u00a0Herodotus, often referred to as the Father of History, was supposedly the first to put into some semblance of order an investigation into the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars. He also collated tales, apocryphal and otherwise, from areas he walked through, and created, in the process, the Western world’s first major work of history. Kapuscinski, who arrived thousands of years after Herodotus, used the latter’s work as a guide not just to understand actual conflict, but to delve into the nature of human emotions that led to their creation.

A German prisoner in Paris, u00a0August 26, 1944