But this book is not aimed primarily at fellow experts or readers of my previous books. I have intentionally and with substantial effort kept it very short in order to reach a new and, I hope, wider audience.

Preface, the Fate of Their Country, Michael F. Holt.

Goddamnit! I ordered the blasted thing in the hopes that it was an extension of his Whig study, the Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, since I haven't yet found a similar study of the early Republican Party that was worth a good goddamn. Instead, I managed to buy what the author himself identifies as a book with fucking training wheels.

Oh, BTW, Wen Spencer's Tinker is a bit of all right; she has the occasional issue with the limited-third-person, and it's essentially a wish-fulfillment escapist romp, but hey - that's what I live for, wish-fulfillment escapist romps. As rumor and possibly C.S. Lewis has it, the only people who oppose escape are critics and jailers. And hey - Tinker has elves in Pittsburgh. What's not to love? Other than the apparent fact that Spencer *was* working on a sequel, but seems to have dropped off the screen.