Please add me to your stable of writers.

@craigkcollins

Favorite historical figure: Benjamin Franklin. A true American genius. I also love his Autobiography, which was really written as a collection of wisdom meant for his son. It's basically one of the first self-help books.

Judging the past through today's lens: I just wrote about this in my Medium piece on Timur the Conqueror and quoted UCLA history professor Lynn Hunt, who warns that there's danger in falling into the trap "presentism," which tends to give those in the present a sense of moral superiority and blurs their vision of what a particular person, culture or event was really about.