#18

Alison Weir’s book on The War Of The Roses was brilliantly written and simplified a hell of a complex family tree. Worth a look into.

#19

This is one of the best books I’ve ever read:

Not strictly history, it’s more economics really I guess. A history of capitalism is getting towards an accurate summary.

#20

My dad loves a history book, so it’s always a safe bet as a Christmas/Birthday present.

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Battle Cry of Freedom has been his absolute favourite - apparently extremely accessible and readable, so need to read it myself soon.

#21

hang on, I’ve just confused him with someone else entirely. ignore!

#22

He’s a Daily Mail columnist so I assume that right-wing conservatism is baked into all his analysis

#23

Oh. Damn

#24

Actually a former editor of the Telegraph and Standard!

But according to his wiki he has voted both Labour and Tory (well he voted for Blair) and he hates Johnson so make of that what you will.

#25

I enjoyed the Tom Holland book Millennium, a very readable narrative history of “the dark ages”, though he’s a bit of a melt.

China Mielville’s October is good.

Really should read more history, I really want to read William Dalrymple’s The Anarchy about the East India Company.

#26

I think reading history books by people who have different political opinions is fine, as long as you’re aware of it (and can bear it)

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#27

Yeah, I sort of assume a lot of history writers who are British, especially those who write about British history are probably going to be Tory. TBH I’m not massively fussed as long as the writing is balanced and honest and not steeped in bias?

#28

Stalingrad is a worthwhile read, even it did feel a bit Corrigan to read it. Been a while since I read it (and I wasn’t as politically/critically engaged then) but I didn’t find it glorifying war or anything. It seemed like a well-written and readable account of a terrible terrible moment in history.

#29

As others have said, I think his mindset is very British upper class and that comes across. It’s very well researched and written, but he is a military historian and there’s a strong focus on the military and strategic aspects, rather than the human angle. It didn’t feel very compassionate towards the immense suffering.

#30

History’s so wide that there’s a bit of history in everything really. Anyway slight stereotype but this:

Also this very specific look at the end of apartheid in SA

This was a good rewriting of perceived histories of Caribbean immigration and empire etc

On post ww2 history

Also politically/on the formation of nation states academic articles like Osiander, ‘Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth,’ Levy and William Thompson, ‘Hegemonic Threats and Great-Power Balancing in Europe, 1495-1999,’ Paul Schroeder, ‘Historical Reality vs Neo-Realist Theory’ shorter pieces.

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#31

ah yeah, the zinnster. Should have mentioned that one myself.

#32

Definitely been at the front of my consciousness when I’ve picked it up

Yeah I wasn’t familiar with him and a quick glance of his military background made it clear. Find it unfathomable that someone could write about a subject like this and not express some kind of emotion towards the suffering and loss. But maybe for some writers this goes without saying.

#33

Battle Cry of Freedom is a good single volume about the Civil War although it lacks some depth (the Far West theatre is pretty much ignored all together, for example). It is really helpful in explaining exactly why the war started though (the war doesn’t really get going until about a quarter of the way into the book iirc). I picked it up several years ago after I played a computer game about the Civil War as I wanted to learn a bit more about it.

After I read this I started (but never finished) the three-volume Shelby Foote tome which is regarded as one of the definitive works. Foote was a novelist as well as a historian so he adds a lot of colour which other history books lack (his descriptions of some of the idiosyncrasies of the generals and politicians can be quite funny). Unfortunately Foote himself was a supporter of some of the Lost Cause myths - and he lauds some Confederates as geniuses and heroes when history has shown us they were anything but.

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#34

I think there are broader, more subtler issues though, like it’s not that the historian votes Tory and therefore always bigs up old Tories, it’s a way of looking at the world. School history was always very “whiggish”, the great man theory of history, and that’s why you learn about kings and people, these singular figures who supposedly bend history to their will. But other historians come at it from a totally different angle - like Marx for example - and say that history is actually shaped by a totally different factor (the class relationship and modes of production in his case).

I’m not a historian though, would love to hear from someone who did a degree and is more up on these ideas than I am

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#35

Really suffers from death of the author stuff as well because whilst it’s so important to get histories written by marginalised peoples it’s always interpreted differently by the individual experiences of the reader

#36

let alone in the internet age where we’re in a curator of the author period, histories and polemic decided by algorithmic popularity

#37

Walter Johnson’s The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States

Highly recommended even if you’re totally unfamiliar with St. Louis. Very easy to read, informative, horrifying, and applicable to the US as a whole.

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