Paper Time Machines, which takes its title from a famous quote from commercial wargame pioneer James Dunnigan, is the latest volume in a burgeoning scholarship on tabletop gaming and in particular historical tabletop games. Within this new niche Paper Time Machines stakes out an interesting territory. Functionally, it is a college textbook covering a variety of aspects of the form, history, and design of historical board games. Teachers and professors will, of course, find much of value in this book for forming their own lessons, but how interesting is it for a non-academic reader?