Prologue

Abstract

With the outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the unprecedented demonstrations held in protest of the police murder of Black American George Floyd, the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States capitol, and now the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many of us have concluded this is an age of living historically. That these days, months, and years are making history that will be studied intensely by our scholarly peers in the future. But we could also argue that this is an age of living historiographically. For at few times in our past has how we tell history, how we engage in history telling, been more important to our present. One need only consider the scholarly and political impact of the ‘1619 Project’ on the forced arrival of enslaved Africans into the American landscape, or the real-time use of social media to manipulate the historical record around the 2020 presidential election in the United States or the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, to be reminded of the extraordinarily high stakes of getting it right.This is also true of the history of gardens and landscapes—built environments that shape lives, nature, and history.