We history buffs are a rare breed. Happy are the hours we spend poring through pages of dusty old books, wandering through museums full of armor and tapestries, and deciphering forgotten languages in primary sources. Those who have never been bitten by the history bug find it hard to understand what attracts us -- until they are bitten themselves.

There are many different ways history lovers have been drawn into the fascinating world of the past, but perhaps the most common is through a good story. The moment we begin viewing history as stories about real human beings with human motivations instead of mere dates, places and statistics, history can take on a whole new luster. Period literature can help bring the past alive with an epic tale, and so can modern historical fiction.

If you are a history buff hoping to get a friend to share your passion for the past, or if you are new to history as a hobby and are trying to understand what others see in it, the best introduction may very well be a historical novel or film. Entertainment has ways of opening the mind to ideas that even the friendliest or most erudite of straight historical texts can never hope to achieve. It helps, of course, when the book is well-written or the film well-directed, and unfortunately historical fiction, just like any other genre, has many more mediocre examples than it does splendid ones. Yet once you find a truly excellent piece of historical fiction, the results can be highly rewarding.

However, the trouble with getting your history from fiction is that it's, well, fiction. This may seem excruciatingly obvious, but it's surprising how many intelligent, educated, well-read individuals take what they read in a historical novel or see in a period film as fact.

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