This is obviously the usual specialist’s snarky take on the generalist. But it really is a problem for me (and I’m really not all that much of a specialist). Presumably, there are equally serious problems that people who know about other things would have with other sections of the book. This is exactly the sort of thing I read in my spare time – but I don’t feel that I can *trust* it.

At least the dissertation on black boot manufacture in C17th Hull probably is reliable on black boot manufacture in C17th Hull. I don’t think I’m the only one who would have absolutely no problem with that sort of dissertation if it were not for the reality that the current structure of an academic career is likely to mean that such a dissertation must be published soon after as a monograph making the case that black boot manufacture in C17th Hull is the key factor in the rise of modernity. If it could just sit in Ann Arbor waiting for someone with an interest in boots and/or Hull to order it, then I’d be fine with it.

and thank you for flagging up a v. important point: that perhaps too much emphasis these days is placed on PhDs needing to fill some unplumbed gap. I feel like this legitimates some really godforsaken PhD topics, such as ‘the manufacture of black boots in seventeenth-century Hull’, or somesuch. There is definitely something to be said for works of masterful synthesis. I am all for it.