Historians Emphasize History's Role in Navigating Present Challenges

She added: “Just imagine what it was like to live through the Civil War; more than 600,000 people were dead. Or live through the Great Depression; one out of four people out of work, the banking system collapsed. Or to live through the early days of World War II when it was unclear that Hitler might conquer the rest of the world. And the important thing to know is that in each one of those times, the people who lived then, they didn’t know the end of their story. They were like us. They were anxious. They were fearful.”

Goodwin , best known for her presidential biographies, appeared on a special episode of the long-running NBC news show focused on the nation’s 250th birthday, as did documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and Secretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie Bunch .

Like Goodwin , Burns — known for, among other things, his documentaries on the American Revolution, the Civil War and the Vietnam War — saw the need for looking at history.

“History is our best teacher, and it can be a helpful guide for everybody, no matter your disposition, political orientation, age, whatever it is. History can be an incredibly important way to digest the present and then figure out what your response is and — and to imagine a future together,” Burns said.

Burns said history proves that whatever divisions we are experiencing now, we’ve seen worse, including during the Revolutionary War itself.

“We are really divided,” he said, “but we were way more divided then, way more divided during the Civil War, way more divided during the Vietnam period. And so I see that division as sort of a mile wide but an inch thick.”

Like Goodwin , Bunch also spoke of hope.