From the delightfully strange to the quietly heroic, the tragic to the just plain interesting, it’s the kind of history that’s so oddly specific, you can’t simply unread it. As the American Historical Association (AHA) explains, historians continually reinterpret the past by bringing “new knowledge and experience” to the evidence. When Ben Affleck made Atlas, he made a choice to focus on make-believe American involvement while completely ignoring historical fact. He says that the “process of historical inquiry—and what it teaches students along the way—is history’s greatest reward.” By analyzing past events, Steinhauer continues, we learn to ask probing questions and challenge our own assumptions.