A map metaphor works well with history in a number of situations. There are different views you can use, depending on whether you care about what people do or what has changed or what has stayed the same. Whatever there is has to be at a useful scale. 1:1 maps aren't of much use in any way. A globe isn't helpful for getting to the grocery store, but is great to see how the continents are shaped. For a long enough trip, you may need a wide country-to-country view along with specific directions to get to the final address. With history, too, if we're trying to make sense of what's around us, the effective result is similar: There are these close and crowded districts that anyone can discuss easily, separated by long, wide, boring stretches that nobody ever asks about. Flyover country.
Big sections of history are flyover country. Sumer and Ur are the first civilizations, but everyone remembers the Egyptians. Rameses and Tutankhamen are 4000 years ago, but there's nothing interesting after that until Greece 1500 or so years later - flyover country. It's good to know about the Romans - until the death of Christ, anyway, at which point who cares about them? Turns out they are still the only interesting thing for roughly another 1500 years, when the Renaissance happens. There, everyone pays attention again...but it's kinda flyover country too, once you've seen a few of the paintings. At least until Columbus shows up, when people start paying attention again.
(It's not certain that 2016 will be like 1939, of course, but (if you'll forgive further map metaphors) it feels like that's the direction we're heading, in approaching years.)
And it's too bad people won't think of it. If you lived through it you know that there was a lot to like about the time since the mid-1980s. It was exciting and vibrant and things were changing. There was the Web and full-immersion video games and computer generated graphics. Cell phones became smartphones, information went everywhere, digital media became streaming, solar cells went from spacecraft to rooftops. There is probably a way to make sense of some parts of it, along the way. There's no story, though, that has a beginning and ending, that ties video games and the web into the financial crisis and what's happened since.
That's probably because, for this little while, people individually did what they thought was important and worthwhile. Whether they are fought for just causes or not, wars require a lot of people moving in the same direction and agreeing on what is to be done. Individual efforts get lost in the larger pushes - one person invented the World Wide Web, but many people were involved in getting the U.S. into WWII. Those individual threads don't tie together as easily as larger government-supported efforts.
Now, though, people are getting tired of the government not doing much. While there's disagreement about what should be done, support for outsiders like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump point to a desire that the government should start being effective in a way it hasn't been. I'm not sure exactly what it will be, but I do think that people tired of confused foreign policy and unhelpful domestic policy will start demanding that the government do its job properly. There are good things and bad things that government can do, if this widespread support is real. Everybody will probably find something they don't like about how it's done.
Keep it in mind. We're leaving flyover country. It's going to get interesting again soon.
