What's the Point?

Much More (or much less) Than Is On the Tin!

First, thank you for your support! It’s why I’m able to spend a year trying out Non-Boring History. So now, in case you're interested in a peek behind the scenes…

I’m here to entertain you.

But I’m not just here to entertain you.

Let me explain. I start, as historians will do, with a story. If it helps, think of it as a parable, only not religious.

When I was a professor, I couldn’t help noticing that many of my undergrads at Georgia Southern University were majoring in what their parents picked: Business Management. Communications. Public Relations.

Colleges are now businesses: Administrators have taken over from faculty, and most regard students as customers, products, raw materials, or all three. As a professor, I teased my classes about their majors: “If this place offered millionaire studies,” I said, “You would all take it thinking you would become millionaires.”

In other words, they fell into that common trap of believing that whatever it says on the tin (as Brits would say) must be true. That people say what they mean. That a slick web site has any relationship at all to reality.