I suspect, however, that the very virtues of my discipline are responsible for the vices of the writers who abuse it. Because history is the people’s discipline, books about it are relatively salable—invitingly so, to indolent cupidity. History’s accessibility to non-specialists makes it seem dangerously, delusively easy.

Academic historians tend to welcome recruits from other ranks, like owls nurturing cuckoos, and applaud the intrusions of neophytes with a glee that physicians, say, would never show for faith-healers or snake-oil salesmen. I am afraid it is time for historians to wipe the smiles from our jaws and start biting back.

Damn. I should put that last phrase on a plaque at work.