@nitsua60 Morson wrote about how our choices are influenced by the kind of story we imagine history to be, and the role we think we have in that story: the comedic relief or the tragically doomed love or the practical sidekick, etc. And he does it through the lens of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy as competing arguments for and against the narrative of humanity.

It shouldn't be possible to make that dry and boring, but academia writing style has polished its ability to suck the joy out of things.

And I was reading Metro 2033 at the same time, which made it even MORE interesting.