...speaking again of course as an enthusiast of history.

Similarly with English history and Russian history. It was the National Schools period of American college curriculum, with all of the attendant problems. For Russian History I had already had an excellent series by a much better Yale educated professor while an undergrad in physics, as accompaniment to two years of Russian language. The Russian history professor was a Stanford educated neo-con who also graded the athletes' papers himself. He was a cold warrior and I was advised that declining to grade his courses would be bad for my career. It turned out that the history department as a whole was bad for my career.

I don't regret any of it, but wish I had had the sense to transfer to a better university, one more open to alternative views. The attitudes of the Russian and English History professors at the U. of Arizona were that the only thing worse than the total incomprehension most students displayed for ideas from the left was that I not only understood them immediately but actually embraced them. They considered themselves guardians at the gate of academe.

So I hardly consider myself a professional historian and I made my way in the world based on my Physics B.S. and attitude. For the next twenty years of so I spent more effort on anthropology and psychology than on history, but resumed my reading in the early '80s.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."