Baets (history, U. of Groningen, the Netherlands) has focused in recent years on the censorship of history and the ethics of historians. Here he collects and revises--often deeply--articles and essays that have been published over the past decade or so, all well after the attempt he made with colleagues in 1995 to establish a code of ethics for historians. Much of his analysis results from pondering why that effort failed so miserably, including such questions as what it is exactly that historians do, and differences between the living and the dead. He discusses a theory of the abuse of history, the dictator's secret archives, defamation cases against historians, duties of the living to the dead, the rights to memory and history, and a code of ethics for historians. A Dutch version, Gebruik en misbruik van de geschiedenis, was published in 2008 by Boom, Amsterdam. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)