In A Path Twice Traveled: My Journey as a Historian of China, Paul Cohen, preeminent historian, influential teacher for many Wellesley graduates, and a close colleague of Helen Lin in the founding of the Chinese Department, traces the development of his work from its inception in the early 1960s to the present, offering fresh perspectives that consistently challenge us to think more deeply about China and the historical craft in general. This memoir is itself a form of “doing history.” Paul Cohen uses the arc of his work to shed light on the disparity between the past as originally experienced and the past as later reconstructed through factual analyses, storytelling, and mythmaking.  In doing so, he shows that addressing this duality of  “what happened then” and “how historians view the past now” is central to the historian’s calling. In this Tiger Talk, Paul will share highlights from this memoir (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42244667-a-path-twice-traveled), reflecting on his journey traversing back and forth between the past and the present, sharing both the meaningful and challenging moments along the way.