Although all ten of us wrote twenty to thirty page papers on different subjects, most of the 72 boxes probably remain unopened. Local and social history allows males and females to be dealt with in equal terms and studies the nine tenths of the population that has not been in the history books. However, there is a danger of unverified speculation since there are often large holes of information and one also needs to supplement their archival research with secondary research. Political history can be considered to be the casualty of the twentieth century. Political history has had to redefine itself in terms of why people come together in political parties.
Political history is now the study of power, no longer just the winners.
However, this type of history oversimplifies human motivation. Psychohistory attempts to psychoanalyze people in the past to understand how their childhood affected their adult life and decisions. This type of history had an instant appeal with readers. However, to write a psychohistory a historian needs to master two fields, psychology and history. This problem is even greater when one learns that psychology has many different schools of thought.