What makes history so special? Why is it different from other subjects? The answer is the kind of questions that historians ask.

Historians are interested in "change over time," and what it is that caused the change.  "Why does the cathedral at Chartes in France look so different from the cathedrals built in Italy a hundred years later?" or  "Why did colonists in Massachusetts object to the Stamp of 1765?" 

And the fascinating thing you'll learn as you look for an answer is that there seem to be  many reasons contributing to the events. "Multiple causation" is the lessons historians learn quickly: There's never just one cause leading to those event, not just one answer to the questions we ask. 

The work we'll do during the year in our American and European history classes revolves around asking questions about change we recognize in the past, and searching for anwsers. The results