That resounds with me: reading fiction is a great way to share the life of other people. Some prefer movies for this, but it's only after ready novels that I've

That resounds with me: reading fiction is a great way to share the life of other people. Some prefer movies for this, but it's only after ready novels that I've sometimes thought of people as if I had met them in real life. As a teenager, there were days where most of my thoughts went to Piotr Bezhoukov, Lev Mychkine, Rogojine... I was partly living in 19th century Russia. There's another way to discover history through fiction, which is to read old books and try to understand the author's point of view. For instance, going on with your example of colonialism-slavery, I remember reading "Gone with the wind": I was astonished by the author's racism. Not a slaver's racism, but the permeating belief that Black people where inferior people, a kind of a big children, with big feelings and little intelligence. I've also learned to be wary of history books, which are sometimes very imaginative (like the tale about about José Figueres in the OP's excerpt) and other times bent to suit the author's beliefs. If I'm really interested in the subject, I usually search for multiple sources.