Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series requires us to think about history. Only thus can we appreciate the significance of Cyrus, Scipio, Stane etc. Who was Stane? He was one whom the Patrol prevented from having any influence - but we must still understand the post-Roman British history that he tried to alter.
We might go on to read some history and, of course, we need not restrict our attention to the periods directly covered by Time Patrol stories. Manse Everard does not have any mission in Russia, 1917-1989. However, he does refer to it. More importantly, what happened in Russia resulted from the Great War which, as Anderson does tell us, ended an era that had started in 1815.
Thus, I feel that my current reading of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago is very much Patrol-related. And this is our history, not just Everard's. Meanwhile, Anderson's Mother Of Kings is still on the agenda.
