An observation on contemporary historical writing

"The person" has not fared especially well at the hands of modern attempts to write about history, which have generally sought to locate historical explanations in the workings of large structures, impersonal forces, and social groups rather than the vagaries and razor-edged contingencies of individual character and agency.

Some of this has to do with the enduring quest to make history resemble a science, a vision that took hold in earnest in the nineteenth century and has never entirely lost its appeal among academic historians....Ironically, the same democratic age that exalted the value of the individual also rendered that individual a prisoner of aggregate forces, with little or no power to control or affect the events of his day.

- Wilfred M. McClay, The Secret of the Self.