The study of history depends heavily on the way it is written. Events in history have been conveyed in many different forms, some being more factual, while others contain a story within the facts in order to spark an interest for the reader. The different styles of writing and the way you retain the information can facilitate or debilitate the quality of the information remembered and the quantity of information remembered.

The opening lines of Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City create a picture of the era. "How easy it was to disappear: A thousand trains a day entered or left Chicago...The women walked to work on streets that angles past bars, gambling houses, and bordellos... But things were changing. Everywhere one looked the boundary between the moral and the wicked seemed to be degrading (Larson 12)." Although the minimal amount of pictures debilitates the visual...