e of the cases that ca up was that of arthur kessler. now, arthur kessler from my parents' generation, from my generation and from the first two decades of my students generation as it were was an automatic and immediate reference. everyone has read "darkness at noon" or knew they ought to read it. in the course of the last ten years you find yourself talking to young people who have nod no idea who kerser will was. and more to the point have no idea what it was that made him so controversial. what communism, anti-communism detes out stalin, debates about totalitarianism meant, why they mattered so much, why they were so heated on both sides. i realized we were rapidly losing touch with some of the core debates, challenges, issues of the 20th century in a way that seemed to me as a historian unprecedented. typically the past lingos and all kinds of ways, we misremember, we rebitz of it, we talk about it, people learn it. we have cut ourselves off from our immediate past and in ways that we can talk about of paying a price for that. the l