something that I found could be invigorating, interesting history. I wasn’t planning on an academic career
so I didn’t have to write in a manner that was in vogue in academia. So in that regard, I did take some
liberties and I wasn’t as necessarily constrained as someone who was going to put themselves on the job
market right away.
I also think that the history texts that we read have become somewhat dry unless they are going for a
completely salacious angle. We have also lost the gift of rhetoric— history was once spoken aloud and told
to people and I think we’ve lost the ability to tell the story. We’ve become caught up in a version of political
fact checking. We worry about who we are going to offend and whether or not our topics are relevant
enough? In some ways, we’ve lost the ability to tell the story based upon the facts or written evidence of
what occurred. I’m always looking for ways to make history more interesting, if for no other reason than
to combat the stereotype that history is boring. That is a challenge and it should be viewed as a challenge
by academics.
How important is a good title to you and can you tell us how you came upon yours?
I worried about the title quite a bit actually. It was Dr. Aleksandr Burak that insisted I have a ‘sexy’ or
provocative title. I was looking for that right title. I came across the reference in one of my sources and