The Trailing Ghost: Examining Paul Cohen’s Three Keys the Historian’s Craft “History is simultaneously there and not there, real and illusory-a ghost forever trailing behind which vanishes when we turn around.” This is the daunting challenge that historian’s face when attempting to accurately elucidate the past. In Paul Cohen’s book History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth he examines China’s nineteenth century Boxer Rebellions through three historical lenses in an effort to both show both the benefits and potential pitfalls of the tools available to a historian in practicing his craft. He contends that reconstruction, experience, and myth are all necessary when studying history; that one of these keys should not be favors to the exclusion of others. The first key or lens that Cohen examines is that of historical reconstruction or studying an event in itself. Cohen attempts to traverse the academic “No Man’s Land” in the hotly contested conflict between historians that contend “there is a fundamental difference between history and reality” due to the narrative nature of history in contrast to the chaos of reality and those others that assert that “narrative is/an essential part of the past reality historians seek to elucidate.” In other words, Cohen argues that narrative and realism both have an equal place in the study of history. Though he champions many of the methods of historical reconstruction, Cohen also warns against the pitfall of “[assuming] with excessive haste that the outcomes we know took place were preordained.” The cardinal sin of the historian is mistakenly making connections between events where they do not exist, especially when these are based on contemporary notions that did not exist during the period in question. Though Cohen offers much perspective in his examination of historical reconstruction perspectives, he