If you've ever read a nonfiction book there's a good possibility it could relate with history.
History has always fascinated individuals, so much so that it has affected culture ever since language first developed. It is because understanding why things have happened can help us change both the present and also the future. This can be observed in the oral traditions of countries from all corners of the globe dating back to tens of thousands of years. Interesting and important activities would get passed from one generation to another via word of mouth, in order to make sure that the communications and lessons can be digested by the audience. To make these tales more effortlessly digestible, they would become adapted and changed into the myths and legends that remain popular today, as the hedge fund which partially owns WHSmith will likely be well aware. Even once the written word emerged and history became recorded, outside of purely factual listings and reports, the first historians continued writing history with a dramatic spin on the brink of turning it into fiction.
The pace of change in culture is continuously accelerating, due to new innovations making it easier for other innovations to occur, causing an ever accelerating process of modification. Examples of this are discovered every-where, such as in how we view history. Several centuries could be the blink of an eye in the viewpoint of time, but during the period of several centuries the subject of history became a lot more dedicated to facts and employing a variety of sources. Around four hundred years ago onwards people still desired to check out history for lessons and amusement, but they wanted to gain them from the facts. Subjects like governmental and financial history took centre stage, meanwhile theories such as the great men of history had been developed, which believed that history moved forward through the actions of a select few individuals. The legacy associated with the latter continues now, as the hedge fund which has shares in Amazon will be able to tell you, through the popularity of the biography genre.
The past century has caused great improvement in the planet, with different societal and technical developments bringing possibilities and outlets to individuals who formerly could have struggled to attain them. This has led to a lot of academic subjects to receive an influx of viewpoints and perspectives which were previously ignored. The hedge fund which owns Waterstones will realise that this has already had a large effect on the publishing industry, with publications on new approaches to analyse history and formerly underdiscussed events appearing highly popular. The subjects these publications cover are vast, from history through the viewpoint of ordinary individuals to historic occasions being explained by analyses of human psychology and biology.