Daniel Lord Smail has an abiding passion: to bring time depth back into the ways in which we teach and research history in this country. He is a history professor at Harvard University. In his book, On Deep History and the Brain, he joins other historians who seek to transcend the legacy of Judeo-Christian sacred chronology. When not otherwise pursuing a history that begins in Africa, he is a European historian who works on law and justice in late medieval Mediterranean cities.