This is from the NewsWeek piece on David McCullough ( http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/12090.html )
He's talking about the traditional agenda of reporting history (which still dominates the US approach to it): telling it in terms of the positive achievements of great men.
He's saying it's more complex than that: there's a darker side too, and great literature explores that darker side as well as the heroism.
The full quote may help:
Some professional historians find McCullough's work too safe and too smooth. A careful reading of his books, however, does not really support that academic critique. McCullough is the least cynical of writers, but he is also among the most clear-eyed. "History is not the story of heroes entirely," he says. "It is often the story of cruelty and injustice and shortsightedness. There are monsters, there is evil, there is betrayal. That's why people should read Shakespeare and Dickens as well as history—they will find the best, the worst, the height of noble attainment and the depths of depravity." In "1776," for instance, Washington is a great man—but his way of life, McCullough makes clear, is made possible by slavery.
