Hated history in school?  Maybe it’s because you had to read textbooks.   The past comes to life in these lively new stories at the Nichols Library in Center Harbor. In ‘Valiant Ambition”, Nathaniel Philbrick (Heart of the Sea) tells how Revolutionary War general Benedict Arnold turned from hero to traitor.  This is “popular history at its best—a taut narrative with a novelist’s touch (Miami Herald).”  In “The Apache Wars,” Paul Andrew Hutton details one of the longest wars in American history. In 1861, a band of Apache, angry at reservation authorities, slipped away and began raiding settlements.  Pursued by the army, the raids continued off and on for the next 25 years.   Author Hampton Sides (Ghost Soldiers)  calls Hutton “a natural born storyteller.”  Also recently added,“War at the End of the World”,  on MacArthur’s campaign in the southwest Pacific.