No, but we must do it anyway, if you were wondering. Not really a spoiler, he says that in the first chapter. Most parts of this book were very strong. Throughout most of the book Perkins deconstructs the feasibility and integrity of literary history, and he does so very well. Chapters 2, 3, and 5 are especially effective at this. The literary theory discussed in chapters 6 and 7 (chiefly focused on New Historicism and Russian Formalism, respectively) greatly interested me. I just wish Perkins spent a little bit more time on why we SHOULD do literary history in spite of its impossibility. We get a little bit of that in the final chapter but some more room for that discussion would have been appreciated.