“We shall fight on the beaches…”

Do bookstore owners everywhere dread re-organizing the  history section? To me, this slog is something between an exercise in diplomacy and a stress test for depression.

To whom does “Western Civilization” refer, exactly? Do Romans go in Ancient History, or under Italy? And how does one divide Wars? (There are usually two or more countries involved, you know.)

Do World Wars I and II go under European or World history; how will South America and Australia feel about that? I have three books in here about South America, and finally wound up putting them in “Hispanic.” Yes, I know.

The Gulf Wars – ho boy. Middle East, or American History? Or in Christian Nonfiction, under St. Jude? (never mind)

Yes, I understand that the Enlightenment and Reformation were different in origin points and influences than the Renaissance, but I couldn’t fit the Renaissance on the Italian shelf because it’s also holding all those Caesar biographies, so those three epochs are bundled together.

Yes, I KNOW Africa is neither a country nor part of the United States, but African history and the American Civil War books wound up together because they took up a whole shelf between them and this arrangement kind of hid the fact that we have 900 books on the American Civil War and four on Africa, plus two on countries in Africa. It’s not a political statement.

The entire top shelf of the history section, stretching right around the corner from the two American shelves to the one European (and other) shelf, is consumed with the enigmatic category “White House.” It wasn’t sarcasm when I put Hilary’s It Takes a Village up there; where else could one place that?

But I didn’t think John Chretien (the Frankophile 20th prime minister of Canada) should be in White House; the French section had room. Yes, I know that Canada isn’t in Europe, thank you, sir.

What’s a bookstore owner to do? I’m tempted to just write “History, as written by its winners” on a sign and hang it above the shelves.