He made Reformation England the best soap opera not on television. Perhaps due to his age, he sat down the whole class and just told us stories, occasionally lobbing acid barbs at the jocks unsuccessfully trying to hide in the back row. Later, when I took a college history class about the Reformation, I encountered a cantankerous and alarmingly elderly professor. His enthusiasm and wit made the subject come to life for the first time, and not just be a collection of names and dates. One of my high school history teachers got so into tales of medieval mayhem that he’d dart back and forth between two blackboards, desperately scrambling to find space to scrawl out more information as he told us about the black death. I always preferred taking a history class with an instructor who had a lot of personality. Wading through the options to find a good one was always excruciating to me. Most of them are bone dry and deadly dull, in my experience. You see, I enjoy history, but I have a hard time getting into nonfiction books. Man, I really wish I had crossed this one off of my to-read list sooner. “Being part of history is rarely a good idea.”
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