2008 an epic year? Historians say it's still too early to tell

If you voted for president or saved for retirement or bought gas, if you were in Detroit or on Wall Street, if you were an Obamaniac or a hockey mom or a pit bull, a client of accused Wall Street swindler Bernie Madoff or the guy who changed the price sign at the gas station, it was a year to remember.

Almost everyone agrees 2008 was one for the history books, including those who write them. The historians who eventually decide what's history and what's not — textbook authors, encyclopedia editors, museum curators — don't like tight deadlines because history is only obvious long after it's happened, and at the moment the wheel's still spinning.

With that caveat out of the way, many of them would agree with Fran Kennelly, 52, a New York advertising salesman, whose verdict on 2008 is: "Unforgettable."

No wonder. He voted in the Democratic primary for Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first woman with a serious shot at the presidency, and in the general election for Barack Obama, the first African-American elected president.

Kennelly paid as much as $4.10 and as little as $1.75 for a gallon of gas; lost about one-third of the value of his retirement fund; bought a hybrid car; watched Tiger Woods win the U.S. Open playing with a double stress fracture in one leg, and saw China host the Olympics, where Michael Phelps won a record eight gold medals.

To the experts as well, 2008 looks like a keeper, largely because of the confluence of two related but distinct events: the election of Obama and the global financial crisis.

Last year "probably is going to be one of those years like 1929, when the chapter ends and you take a breath before moving on to the Depression and the New Deal," says Paul Boyer, noted historian of the Cold War and editor of a U.S. history textbook, "The Enduring Vision."

The election is a milestone — "in 50 years, a major fixture in the textbooks," says Brian DeLay, a University of Colorado history professor and co-author of "Nation of Nations," another college text. "I think we're heading down a totally different road."

To Columbia University historian Eric Foner, editor of "The Reader's Companion to American History," Obama's election "changes the framework" of American politics, like Thomas Jefferson's in 1800, Abraham Lincoln's in 1860 and Ronald Reagan's in 1980.

Brent Glass, director of the Smithsonian's Museum of American History in Washington, is working on a timeline of American history for an exhibition. He's pretty sure 2008 will be on it.