Robert C Law

Robert C. Law is a native of Indiana who was raised with a love of the American west and a deep sense of appreciation for the pioneering spirit of those who accepted the challenges of the frontier.

He lived for eight years in Washington before settling in California where he taught for thirteen years. He is past-president of the Orange County (California) Historical Society and was a member of the Oregon-California Trails Association.

He is an advocate of “interactive social science,” a principle which states that peoples, places, times, and events are inseparably interwoven and that we, as observer-participants cannot remove ourselves from them no matter how we may wish otherwise. Such being the case, Bob stresses the imperative that social science be studied from within, as an active part, not from without as though a casual observer.

Bob has traveled extensively having visited every state in the Union, almost every nation in the Western Hemisphere and several in Europe and Asia. His travels have given him a valuable perspective on the world’s people, places, and heritage. An avid photographer, these travels have been recorded in hundreds of photos many of which are included on these pages.

He likes to think of himself as a histo-philosopher, seeing the past not as a catalog of dates, names, and impersonal happenings, but as a living process through which men, women, and children just like us built their lives and found their way. The vitality of his approach is reflected through make-believe headlines that draw attention to the very real events of our past and the interpretive style with which they are discussed.

Attempting never to judge the people who are no longer here to defend their actions, he prefers to interpret events in terms of the times. He encourages readers to place themselves into the events as participants and judge more by what they would do than what was done.

Children find his presentation style friendly and more understandable than that of the traditional school book. Using this innovative format they receive the information they need and a grasp of how historic events fit together. The purpose of education is not compromised in the effort to make it interesting!