Dhis book is a comfort to all those concerned about their afterlife in the memories of future generations. Even without writing memoirs and without any hint of celebrity, we leave “traces” – the central concept of the book title – on paper and in digital space. Nobody is nobody; everyone can become the object of searches and historical research. That’s how it is in today’s Google and Facebook world. This has been the case to some extent since secular and spiritual authorities began to record their subjects and believers in lists. It only needs a historian like Emma Rothschild, hungry for files, perceptive and computer savvy, to correlate the names on such lists – and ultimately on tombstones. A buys an orchard from B, C takes D to court over a broken jug, E writes down what she wants to inherit from F, G and H sign a marriage contract: these are the source molecules that become mini-stories. In other words, this is how society is formed.
The arduous art of getting much out of few and meager testimonies can continue to astound in modern history, while it is part of the working norm of those who deal with archaeology, ancient history or non-literate societies. Microhistory and everyday history as the story of nobodies and “little” people were new departures in the 1980s and have never gone out of fashion. Emma Rothschild has used these research methods and modes of representation with particular virtuosity, careful not to cross the border into historical fiction.
