Interesting history

I have often thought on and discussed the way that history is much more memorable for me when I hear it in conjunction with some of the details of the everyday life of the time as opposed to the bare facts of battles and lines of kings. That is the basis of my viewpoint that it is more important for certain aspects of history to learn it from the living literature of the time rather than from a hollow history book. The following (rather lengthy) quote is an interesting discussion along the same lines (which I obviously appreciate since it supports my viewpoint):

The historian points back to the men of other ages, and from the gradually clearing mist in which they are first discovered, like the mountains of a far distant land, the generations of the world are displayed to our mind's eye on grand and regular procession. But the transactions of men become interesting to us only as we are made acquainted with men themselves. Great and bloody battles are to us battles fought on the moon, if it is not impressed upon our minds, by some circumstances attending them, that men subject to like weaknesses and passions with ourselves, were the combatants. The establishments of policy make little impression upon us, if we are left ignorant of the beings whom they affected. Even a very masterly drawn character will but slightly imprint upon our memory the great man it belongs to, if, in the account we receive of his life, those lesser circumstances are entirely neglected, which do best of all point out to us the dispositions and tempers of men. Some slight circumstance characteristick of the particular turn of a man's mind, which at first sight seems but little connected with the great events of his life, will often explain some of those events more clearly in our understanding, that the minute details of ostensible policy. A judicious selection of those circumstances which characterize the spirit of an associated mob, paltry and ludicrous as some of them may appear, will oftentimes convey to our minds a clearer idea why certain laws and privileges were demanded and agreed to, than a methodical explanation of their causes. A historian who has examined human nature himself, and likewise attends to the pleasure which developing and tracing, does ever convey to others, will employ our understanding as well as our memory with his pages; and if this is not done, he will impose upon the latter a very difficult task, in retaining what she is concerned with alone.

from Joanna Baillie's Introductory Discourse to her Plays on the Passions (Broadview edition pp 78-80).

I do wonder, however, if this view to the approach of history is particularly feminine. The relational aspect seems to dominate over the logical aspect. It does seem from my general (and rather simplistic) idea of the way it has worked over time that the factual and logical approach ruled while institutions were the domain of men and that this second view of the study of history has only sprung up since women have had their foot in the door of the education system (becoming inreasingly popular as they gain dominance in many ways). Interesting. Perhaps I should take a vote amongst my acquaintances.