Welcome to History Comes Alive!
Website of Ambeth R. Ocampo, Filipino historian, who for the past four decades has taken history from university lecture halls to return it to a wider public where it also belongs.
This website is the historian’s digital notebook. It shares his editorial page column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the longest-running column on Philippine history, along with his social media feeds and a blog that reflects his joy in historical research.
If you think History is boring, you probably had a boring teacher.
History should not be dull because it is about past lives, shows how human nature shapes our present and future. History, when constructed using primary sources, presents the past in a new light. In it we find contemporary relevance.
Rizal Without the Overcoat
A page on this website seeks to reintroduce Jose Rizal to the public through his own writings. Through texts and archival photographs, we can revive the Rizal fossilized in bronze and marble.
In time, the website will make all of Rizal’s known works available online, translated from the original Spanish, German, French, Italian, and Tagalog for research, reflection, and enjoyment.
The Marcos Diaries
Another page on the website that presents transcriptions of the handwritten diaries of Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr., discovered in Malacañang after the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution. Drawn from multiple repositories and supplemented with material from the Official Gazette, the texts published here are among the most complete and carefully validated versions available.
These diaries serve as a primary source for contemporary Philippine history, even as they reflect the author’s biases and self-perspective. They must be read with care to better understand the life, mind, and times of the tenth President of the Philippines, covering the years 1970 to 1984.
Blog and Publications
The blog features Ambeth Ocampo’s editorial column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the longest-running column on Philippine history. Here, history is brought down from the textbook and into everyday reading, told with clarity, context, and a sense of relevance to the present.
Alongside this, the publications page presents a gallery of his books, offering a broader view of his work as a historian. These titles reflect years of research and writing, allowing readers to engage more deeply with the stories and insights first encountered in his column.