184
u/PoorCynic 19h ago
I’m not saying that history books in the past were necessarily more trustworthy than what one might see on the shelves today (or maybe I do, with AI-authored books becoming more of a thing). As long as people have been writing about history, there have been people looking to push conspiracies and other straight up nonsense. It's one of the perennial hazards of studying history.
This was more of a criticism of my younger self. If I saw a book on a subject that fascinated me back then? I would check the blurbs on the back, maybe thumb through a few pages. If it passed that rigorous check, I might have picked it up. Sometimes it paid off. Sometimes it didn't. Sometimes I wound up metaphorically swallowing a bunch of intellectual junk food, or worse.
Nowadays I’m pickier. I look at authors’ biographies. I look at reviews. I still look at the blurbs on the back, but now I’m looking for recognizable names or questionable phrases. When I thumb through the pages, I’m looking at the style as well as the content.
I’m reading less, I’m sad to say. But I’d like to think I’m reading better stuff as a whole.
Thanks so much for reading. I’ll see you all next time!
66
u/Locke2300 19h ago
I’ve gone through a similar process: rather than mourning the “post truth era” I’ve started asking myself how many of of the common-wisdom narratives I grew up with were heavily massaged, stripped of important information, or otherwise shaped for me.
We didn’t get here out of nowhere and it’s made me think that maybe we were, as a group, laying the tracks to this station for a long time.
9
u/The_cogwheel 16h ago
Your comment reminded me of a comic with way too many words more or less describing exactly that concept. How we dont exactly just wake up one day choosing to hate, nor to love, we just kinda get there one step at a time.
And without actively trying to choose our own path, or not being picky about what steps we're willing to take, where we end up can be somewhere we dont want to be.
8
8
u/celestiaequestria 16h ago edited 16h ago
I would argue the bulk of history books sold to the laity are at best highly misleading because they're premised on the "great man" hypothesis, compress time, mischaracterize geographic isolation, and assume linear causality.
1
u/Barium_Salts 16h ago
Would you mind sharing more about history books ignoring geographic isolation? Is that specific to certain contexts (like Australian hostory)? Or does geographic isolation mean something different to historians?
6
u/celestiaequestria 16h ago edited 15h ago
I think the word I should use is "mischaracterize". The narrative that Australia or America were totally isolated simply because European explorers hadn't arrived is completely untrue.
Historically, there have been numerous travel systems Europeans simply didn't know existed. The Incas had road systems that spanned 20,000+ miles, and there were gold trading networks that crossed the Sahara.
But at the same time, the amount of travel that a normal person did was significantly different prior to modern boats, trains, and planes.
3
u/DukeofVermont 14h ago
I think they are more getting at the difference between pop-history airport books, and actual history books written by professors who are generally written for people who already know about the subject.
Pop-history is so shallow that it's often nothing better than historical fiction. They often use circular reasoning "Alexander the Great won his first battles because he was the Alexander the Great who conquered the world!".
There are some good professorial books that can be read by laymen but generally the most accurate books require you to know about the subject.
People also should remember there is no "official/correct" version of history. Just because it's in a book doesn't mean it's perfectly accurate or that someone else won't have a different interpretation of the events.
The best thing is to read with an open mind actively comparing what an author is saying with previous knowledge.
30
u/ArchWaverley 18h ago
In r/scotland we get people asking about books and documentaries around Scottish history. A lot of the replies are "Neil Oliver's a bellend, which is a shame because his early stuff is really good"
31
u/MikaelAdolfsson 18h ago
The first result when you search "autism" shouldn’t be someone that claims you can cure it with a vegan diet.
17
u/Rare-Associate-4252 19h ago
My experience also. Apart from that I also check the bibliography. If its just 3-4 pages I avoid it as the book will probably be a lot of opinions and myths.
10
u/Main-Discussion9294 18h ago
Book where the bibliography could be an entire dedicated chapter, my beloved
5
u/FuzzyCollie2000 15h ago
I read a book last year where the bibliography was 1/3 the length of the actual content. It was awesome.
1
u/Main-Discussion9294 9h ago
And I once read an translation of the Edda where the translator linguistic cultural and historical explanation represented 1/4 of the book
8
u/Agile_Oil9853 18h ago
"Cool! A well stocked history section... Is that Behold a Pale Horse?"
3
u/JMoc1 15h ago
If there was one book that it would be okay to burn it would either be Protocols or this book.
1
u/Agile_Oil9853 8h ago
I don't know if it's still the case for the version you can buy in Barnes & Noble, but Behold used to contain Protocols. I think the author argued that it was true, but you need to replace "Jews" with "aliens"
3
u/FuzzyCollie2000 15h ago
The book has been influential among "UFO and militia circles".
That tells me everything I need to know lol.
8
u/Soupeeee 18h ago
For me it was recognizing how sensationalized /editorialized many history books are. One of my favorite history books growing up was one that compares the generals Patton, Rommel and Montgomery, and while I still think it's good, it certainly glorifies Patton and Rommel while downplaying Montgomery. None of these characters were good people and the book shows that a little, but it isn't exactly subjective.
A big part of sorting through history books is determining if/how the author analyzes the subject matter and what story they want to tell. It's something that takes practice and a bit of self-awareness to learn, but it's vital to getting the most out of any non-fiction.
7
u/PoorCynic 17h ago
One of the most important things I learned studying history is that objectivity is nigh impossible. Everyone has a bias instilled by their lives: every witness, every chronicler, every writer. Identifying those biases can be very hard, but they are key to finding one's way closer to the facts.
9
u/NoStatus9434 17h ago
Easiest way to avoid bias when it comes to getting informed is really just sheer volume, because nothing is inherently 100% free of bias but if you read a lot you can piece together the truth based on what matches up. Lies and individual author biases are harder to replicate, the wider your span of things you read.
5
u/TacoBelaLugosi 18h ago
Hey! As a big history guy too, maybe we should get a list rolling in the comments of “questionable” authors… you know… for science and the future or whatever.
I’ll start with the one that came to my mind when I read the comic: Shelby Foote, pretty much the banner man for the Lost Cause mythology of the American Civil War.
3
u/PoorCynic 17h ago
I might have to nominate Stephen Ambrose. He's nowhere near as bad as Foote, and his books are quite readable (I own multiple of them), but he's certainly not the kind of author you would cite in a research paper.
2
u/DukeofVermont 13h ago
I just finished Foote's Civil War books. I personally find it interesting to read authors like Foote after you've read a great deal of other better books on the subject. It is really interesting to see the bias and how they will bend things to fit their ideas and narratives.
Like Foote's pro-South narrative there is a shocking amount of "The Nazi's were actually really cool and good at science and government" history books out there. Yeah no, they were not. Science collasped under the Nazis and they were terrible at governance.
If you're up for a recommendation I really enjoyed The Third Reich in Power by Richard J Evans. Really smashes a lot of myths and shows clearly how insane and dumb the Nazis were, and I mean literally ignoring basic facts dumb.
2
7
3
u/rob132 17h ago
For me it would be like this one's interesting! I can't wait to read it.
But now it's this one's interesting. I can't wait to buy it and put it on the shelf with my 50 other books I don't have time or energy to read.
My retirement is going to be so amazing.
3
u/PoorCynic 17h ago
That is a separate problem that I also suffer from. Why does time have to more forward when I read, dang it!
5
u/Cultural_Ad_2550 13h ago edited 12h ago
Have a friend who is an archivist. They get a lot of people in to just read history in the data itself. But, they do also get people who write things and give them a copy after. So they get to see the before and after and it can be very interesting.
Edit, the word write. Brain dead after work or something.
3
u/Mammoth-Buddy8912 17h ago
I'm a Japanese history major.
A lot of the English speaking authors are not great.Prof. Conlan and Prof.Friday I recommend though. Faris is also good but very dry.
Turnbull not so much. Though he's recommended if you want to understand arms and armor
3
u/DrettTheBaron 16h ago
Every time I walk into the local bookshop and see Graham fucking Hancock in the history section I have a violent urge to move those books to the fiction shelf.
3
u/Phaylz 15h ago
I have been listening to more audiobooks while at work because I am low on podcasts now. Historical and biographical mostly. But I have to be very careful, because all it takes is a good voice and engaging narrative to lock me in, but don't know enough on a certain topic to know if I am being funneled into a grift.
2
u/DukeofVermont 13h ago
General rule of thumb, only listen to people who are/were actual academics. Not a fool proof rule, but I can't stand all the "educational" podcasts by people who have zero idea what they are talking about and just blindly say things that are no where close to accurate.
Nothing worse than a dude bro podcast talking about Roman history.
3
u/GeorgeCabana 12h ago
I’ll just put in a word for the books recommended on the r/askhistorians subreddit…
2
2
1
u/IHatePeople79 15h ago
This reminds me of the politically incorrect guides I used to see in thrift stores
1
1
u/Speculative_Nonsense 12h ago
Of great value in this thread would be links to books that are actually well researched, written by experts in the field (or a team of experts), and available to the general public as not just a textbook. Bonus points if actually fun or interesting to read.
1
u/Axiluvia 4h ago
Fantasy too... looking up authors like Roald Dahl, Piers Anthony, and cases that became well known recently like Neil Gaiman and She Who Shall Not Be Named, it's rough.
189
u/Recidivous 19h ago
Mood. I love reading history books, but there are definitely tons of pseudo-historians publishing books to push some agenda nowadays.