I'm looking forward to the future, which is a good thing, because it's coming.

History is important. More than any other topic, it is about us. Whether one deems our present society wondrous or awful or both, history reveals how we got to this point.

Taking ideas seriously does not fit with the rhetorical style of textbooks, which presents events so as to make them seem foreordained along a line of constant progress. Including ideas would make history contingent: things could go either way, and have on occasion. The 'right' people, armed with the 'right' ideas, have not always won. When they didn't, the authors would be in the embarrassing position of having to disapprove of an outcome in the past. Including ideas would introduce uncertainty. This is not textbook style.

There is no excuse for these 1,152 page textbooks.

I don't think teachers read the textbooks. And I don't think adoption committees read the textbooks before they adopt them. I think they look at them.

Textbooks pretty much have no real drama. They have no real storyline. To the extent they have a storyline.

There's no excuse therefore, for a 1,152 page book. I think we should all be using 300-page paperbacks. These exist.