Historians' PerspectivesEvery situation can be looked at from so many different angles that it is very difficult for two people to agree on what is happening. Ten people could look at the same situation and create ten different theories or hypotheses about what is happening. Indeed, no two people have the same background, no two people have the same experiences and no two people think exactly the same thing. These factors combine to distinguish each person as an individual. Each person has the ability to interpret the same situation differently. This most often occurs when a historian has a theory about a historical period or event. One historian might look at the assassination of John F. Kennedy and think it was a government conspiracy, while another might see it as simply a former Marine going crazy and killing the president. Still on the same topic, a third historian can combine the facts from both arguments to create their own entirely new view. This is exactly what happened after Richard Hofstadter wrote his book The Age of Reform. He made an argument about progressivism in his 1955 book, which was not written as fact but rather as opinion. Then, three different articles were written on the same topic from different angles. Richard L. McCormick, Paula Baker, and Peter G. Filene have all written articles agreeing or disagreeing with Hofstadter. On some points they completely disagreed with arguments made by Hofstadter, but then in the same article they agreed and supported an argument made by Hofstadter. All four people wrote on the same topic, but all four had different points of view. It was their right as individuals to do so, and at times they had similarities, but at other times they gravitated toward other sides of the spectrum. Hofstadter, in his book, The Age of Reform, broke down the Reform Era into a period from 1896 to the 1930s. During this period, he then divided it into three distinct sections or movements. The first part is that of the populist movement, the second is the progressive movement and the third is that of the reforms made during the New Deal. It begins with the Populist movement and how it began based on the agrarian myth in rural and southern areas. This myth led farmers to believe that they held an important role in society and that their work had special value..