Look, humankind stays the same

Alessandro Barbero, "The only difference between historians and novelists is that the novelists can invent."

The tickets sold out in mere minutes—many of the people who wanted to attend his lecture at the Festival of the Mind had to wait for the video. One hour and forty minutes, that’s the duration of 1204: Crusaders discover Constantinople.

You would not think it a topic of great interest, the fourth crusade. But a few mere hours after posting, the videos already have a combined views count above 1,700 (12,800 after 1 day). In the era of fake news and deniers, Alessandro Barbero’s history lessons are a certainty.

He has taken over the internet with hour-long, college-level history lessons. The key to his success is an uncanny ability to take material that often thought of as aseptic and make it come to life. We love stories that are alive, fun, and above all human.

An hour-long tale of the life of Frederick II of Prussia in his words turns into an extraordinary hybrid between historical documentary and psychological drama. “The only difference between historians and novelists is that they can invent,” he says.

To do what he does, Barbero insists, “We tell everyone’s life story.”

“I realized that here is the key to our relationship with the people who lived in the past, in the sense that human beings on the one hand are always the same, with our defects, our weaknesses, our insecurities, our anxieties , our desires, our cravings, our impulses. And this is fundamental to pass the story on today, also to pass it on to school children.

At the same time, however, the beauty of history is that it makes you see human beings exactly like us, who however have built different societies, where there are other rules, in which behaviors, the things that can and cannot be done change, from one era to another, from one world to another.”

Once we’re aware of this, you know that the job of the historian is to hold these two opposites together, to ride this balance. A historical person, like any other person of the time, was actually very similar to us, we could talk and understand very well who the person was. However, many ideas were completely different from ours.

Barbero’s most important work is to focus on the stories—rather than the historian.

Stories he tells beautifully, because Barbero is a storyteller. He won the Strega Prize in 1996 (Italy’s most distinguished literary award) for Bella vita e guerre altrui di Mr. Pyle gentiluomo. He wrote five other novels and a collection of short stories.

His narrative is captivating every question he explores.

What’s the story with burning books?

Barbero has a history of answering burning questions people have. In 2007, Barbero was on Rai’s ‘Superquark’ program to offer historical insights. You’ll find all kinds of podcasts and video interviews on contemporary issues like migration.

With a few rare exceptions in French, they’re all in Italian. His recent podcast with Chora Media answers pressing questions. Take for example the history of book-burning.