If you have no deep knowledge of acids it comes as a surprise
that an acid with very interesting properties has so simple a
formula as H2SO4. My, my: just look what those darn chemicals
do. If you have thus far read Jane Austen for her exciting plots
it will come as a surprise to be told that she invented the free
indirect style in the English novel and achieved in that way her
comic effects. Remarkable. Notions such as these stick. The
unsurprising matter does not. You could call it, in honor of
Jerry Seinfeld, the Yada-yada-yada Theory of Learning. "Yada-
yada-yada," you will recall, is the all-purpose filler, the
etc., the and-so-forth, the proceed-as-before. No one learns
from yada. Stick to the surprising stuff. Fortunately most of
what people think they already know is wrong. And so you can
rather easily surprise them, avoid yada, and teach. Consider,
for example, what you think you know about the subject of these
three imposing volumes, the economic history of Britain since
William and Mary, written by