He looked Peter up and down. “You know absolutely no history, absolutely none?” Peter nodded. “Well, that can only be made up by giving you a list of books to read. But I will sketch in the general outlines, so that you can get your bearings. Our histories, like our calendar, are divided roughly into two parts: B.M. and A.M.—Before Marx and After Marx. This, for example,”—pointing to a day calendar on the wall—“is the Year of Our Marx 282, which means 282 years after His birth. Certainly you learned at least that in the Communist schools before you were eight!” Peter nodded again. “But this is the older division. Our recent writers divide history into three great periods: Ancient History, the Dark Ages, and Modern History. Ancient History is all that period, of which practically nothing is now known, that came before what was amusingly called in the Dark Ages the Industrial Revolution. Of course it wasn’t a revolution at all; it was a counterrevolution.
