Because time travel almost automatically entails comparing two societies, it can be an excellent way of pointing out the good and the bad in our own society and in others. To Say Nothing of the Dog takes this one step further since the historians are not traveling from our own time but from the near future, encouraging the reader to consider what our society will be like in, say, a hundred years—whether it will be like the one Willis portrays or, if not, how it will differ, in addition to how it is like the past.

Since no one can know what the future will be like, extrapolating probable futures from our present can be an entertaining exercise.

1. What period from the past would you most like to visit, and why?

2. If you could change one historical event, what would you change? How do...