My belovéd and I trained as historians. He, being wiser, left with a B.A., and did useful work in the world. I, alas, spent much time in graduate school before noticing that being a historian was not about history, but about surviving in a university history department. As a result, he still enjoys reading history, while I prefer science, paleontology, police procedurals or the Farmer's Almanac.

Thus, he is the more aware of recent developments in scholarly history, and was not nearly so shocked to receive into the house a pair of purportedly scholarly books, one on the history of the footnote, another on what we used to dismissively call what if history.

Is it only me, or is there something wrong in a discipline that is reduced to writing a history of the footnote? To be fair, I read the book, including the footnotes, before coming to this conclusion. It started well, with a chapter of sly wit on the uses of the footnote as a weapon in the professional wars of historians, with insightful sociological observations along the way on everything from the nature of academic status to the enslavement of the research assistant.

Alas, thereafter it was straight academic history, revisionist and dry, exposing and refuting the myth of von Ranke's creation of critical history and its accompanying badge of authenticity, the footnote. I mean, who cares? Who, outside of academic historians, has heard of von Ranke, or knows whether he or Kaiser Wilhelm invented the critical method?

Face it, von Ranke, and his aspiration to write history as it actually happened, was already out of fashion among grad students when I was one, and things have only become more extreme since then. If you doubt it, review the literature on the Alan Sokol controversy of 1996, around a scientist who managed to string together a mess of deconstructionist jargon purporting to be a critique of modern science, and got it published in a respected academic journal before revealing that the whole thing was satire.

Or, if you prefer, look up a collection of essays called Virtual History. This hefty tome contains serious essays, by serious scholars, on what would have happened if...., say, Germany had won the Second World War or the American Revolution had not occurred. Now, one can, in fact, read lots of stories that explore exactly these kinds of alternative universes. They are available in the Fantasy and Science Fiction section of your local library or bookstore, and are often both entertaining and thought-provoking.

So, why are a cabal of professional scholars going into competition with the alternate universe writers? According to the Introduction, it is vitally necessary to blast contemporary historians out of their serious dedication to determinism, to remind them that, however it actually happened, it could have happened otherwise, that humans make choices and exercise free will.

Perhaps I am missing something, but I seem to recall exactly this debate raging lo, these many years ago, between the Marxists and everybody else. I imagine it still rages between the radical feminists/deconstructionists/neo-marxists, and everybody else. And, again, who cares? Philosophers have been arguing this point for at least 2,500 years, with no resolution in sight, despite the fact that they have been joined in the debate by theologians, anthropologists, sociobiologists, cab drivers, politicians, ten-year old boys and cats trying to convince you that something innate just made them slash that sofa to ribbons. I find it hard to believe that an entire volume of What If history is going to influence the beliefs of one side or the other, no matter how seriously the participants take their work.

As Calvin's father was prone to say, "That boy is not getting enough homework".

It all reminds me of my own time in the hallowed halls, and my many reasons for leaving. I loved teaching. I loved research. I hated the cloying, cloistered air of the academy, the apparently complete lack of contact between many of its denizens and any form of reality recognisable to even a substantial minority of the rest of humanity, the pompous self-importance of professors who really believed that, were they but given the power to legislate, the world would achieve perfection almost immediately.

And students believe them, at least, undergraduates do. Well, maybe freshmen. At least, freshmen who never get around to reading Coles' Notes on Plato's Republic. I suppose it is just as well, for very few actual adults have much time for this kind of stuff. Most of them are too busy trying to make a living, raise children, avoid being killed or maimed in a local civil war or mugging, figure out what is really true out of all the drek in the newspaper, or discussing the state of the food dish with the cat. If they even see a book, the majority cannot read. Those who can take one look at a page full of footnotes and put the thing quietly back on the shelf where they found it. If they are going to spend time in the world of what if, they are going to dream themselves a future, not worry about the past.

I suspect that the publication of books like these has much to do with the Publish or Perish mentality. Given how few tenured positions have been available in universities over the last thirty years, I am surprised anyone bothers. I suppose hope springs eternal and all that.

If scholars really are reduced to taking this kind of publication seriously, I would urge all university authorities to suspend all publication requirements immediately. In fact, they might seriously consider a publication penalty, to be put in place for at least ten years. I am not so idealistic as to expect that deans, chancellors or Ministers of Education would even consider making teaching excellence a requirement for tenure. Nor do I expect them to be honest, and admit that their publication requirements have resulted in the collection and dissemination of more worthless trivia than the entire history of professional sports. They could pretend they were trying to save the ozone layer by dramatically reducing the cutting of trees and the processing of paper.

Perhaps, if the university authorities refuse to act, the political authorities could force them to. An ideal way would be to pass legislation requiring everyone in a university administration management post to actually read every book published by every member of their faculty within one year of its appearance.

That ought to do it.