While remaining busy at home with his own family ("I'll never have an empty nest," he says) Ozment has written a series of books examining family archives and correspondence in the early modern period.

"Family correspondence is a source that can really talk back, as opposed to court records or simply quantitative data," Ozment says. "After you read 1,000 letters from a person, you know that person really well--it's like marriage in that you come to see all of their pros and cons."

"A source like that is hard to over-simplify," he adds.

Ozment says that some historians consider the outlook he has developed on the historical family overly "rosy," but he vigorously defends the legitimacy of his approach.

"There's been a trend in history to deconstruct the past, and the truth found underneath is very often a dirty truth," he says. "There's a lack of human sympathy in that approach which offends me."

"We have to learn to be fair to the past in order to be fair and realistic about ourselves."