1. Quote: “A biographer’s alter ego is usually the subject himself, while a microhistorian’s alter ego may be a figure who plays the role of detective or judge in relation to the subject” (140). 
  2. Comment: I think this can relate back to the main question in this essay -whether microhistorians have more or less sympathy for their subjects than do biographers. A biographer having an alter ego of the “subject himself” is getting so close to the subject, because affection is almost essential in biographies. Ann Douglas even mentions a page later that a successful biography has to be like a marriage, a love affair, between the biographer and the subject. They need to almost live their lives through them to understand their whole life story in order to write about it. Where a microhisorians alter ego being a detective or judge in relation to the subject, makes more sense because microhistory is less focused on the whole life of an individual or subject, but more about key events – and going into depth about what it really means. In microhistory you need to dig, because to understand the subject, the information might not all be on the surface.
    1. Question: I would say that microhistorians have less sympathy or the subject due the the lesser sense of closeness they have. But my question is, where does betrayal come into place (in biography)? If a biographer can get so close to the subject, to just end up betraying them, that shows no sympathy. So now I question my first thought about microhistorians having less sympathy.
  1. Quote: “If biography is largely founded on a belief in the singularity and significance of an individual’s life and his contributions to history, microhistory is founded upon almost the opposite assumption: however singular a person’s life may be, the value of examining it lies not in it’s uniqueness, but in its exemplariness, in how that individual’s life serves as an allegory for broader issues affecting the culture as a whole” (133). 
    1. Comment: I really struggled with the concept of this essay and understanding what the author was trying to convey to us. I had to re-read multiple sections to try and get a hold on the concept of the difference between microhistorians and biographers. From what I can understand from this quote, microhistory deals with writing about someone who had done something in particular that is exemplary, and bringing this attention to a regular person.  Someone who doesn’t get this recognition in history, and bringing it back now. And a biographer more focuses on an individual’s life as a whole (someone important) and what they have contributed to history.
      1.  Question: What is the difference between the word uniqueness and exemplariness in this quote?