Alarm signals about the loss of collective memory and ignorance of our history are multiplying. In today’s dominant perception of history, there is a past that seems forgotten. And the weight of oblivion is perhaps stronger here than elsewhere. But what does it mean to free oneself from the weight of the past?

This book is at the same time an apologia of History and a worried gaze onto the forgetful society in which we live. A society where History, as a discipline, is disparaged and marginalized. Where to forget the past is a phenomenon connected with the new generations’ prospective of a disappearing future, and where resurfacing nazi-mythologies are linked with a hatred of those who come “from the outside in”.

«Prosperi’s pugnacious pamphlet is first and foremost a passionate apologja of History, which nevertheless sounds like a desolate de profundis on a world all flattened by a present dominated by social media and obsessive smartphone use». Massimo Firpo, Domenica - Il Sole 24 Ore

«The historian’s profession is charged with responsibility because advances in knowledge are linked to an awareness of all that has been neglected. It is in this passage that the Prosperi scholar of heretics is revealed, when he shows us the crowd of restless shadows demanding justice around the tribunal of history, the women, the subaltern classes, the cultures erased by colonialism, the non-European societies, all humanity in the dark claiming the right to speak. … To break through the mists on the horizon, especially in the global pandemic, we need to rebuild the bridge between the living and the dead. Prosperi contributes to this with an indignant, thought-provoking and very learned book». Simonetta Fiori, Robinson – La Repubblica