Can you think of any history books, regardless of the covered subject matter...

Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence

I can refer you to packages of primary documents or binders of statistics and figures, spreadsheets of income figures across sectors in different years in England during the 19th century, stacks of journals from people who were just random nobodies in Germany in the 30s, or the collection of all 2 million words of all the Ancient Greek texts which have come down to us, a photo collection of all the artifacts from the ancient Iberians.

That is the raw that historians work with; material artifacts, contemporaneous news reporting, statistical data, archives of documents, records, and so on. The moment you turn this into narrative you are engaging in interpretation, and while there are definitely better and worse interpretations of the given facts and data, there is no such thing as a ‘just the facts’ narrative.

Even just simply saying ‘what happened at the battle of Waterloo’ isn’t straightforward. It’s not like it was filmed, so it needs to be reconstructed from the accounts of all the people who survived it, and the fact that everybody wants to come out the hero means that you can ever take any account you have of this at face value.

For narrative to take place there needs to be some point of view, and you constantly are going to have to grabble with who’s points of view you are going to include and who’s you are going to exclude. The outcome of Waterloo was very different based on the side you were on.

Even if we can take the brute facts of an event as given, the key to history writing is coming to an understanding of how events were understood *by those experiencing them*.

How did soldiers see it? How about the generals? The political leadership? And the same questions on the opposite side. How did rural pesants types understand something like the French Revolution, what about the urban workers during the Nazi take over? How did the experience of women change during the time of Oliver Cromwell? Maybe that’s a question you don’t care about, in which case you are taking an explicit stance on who’s point of view you care about in an event, and this is an interpretive choice which goes beyond ‘just the facts’.

Some people are going to dismiss any history written in the Marxist paradigm, despite that just meaning taking the point of view of the average working person, and foregrounding the conflict between classes in the their narratives.

Classics like Hobsbawn’s history of modern Europe series focuses on how economic and social factors, and the development of technology strongly relate to the changes which happen within the countries of Europe, and how this looked to the lowly worker experiencing it. AJP Taylor covers a lot of the same period in his Struggle for the Master of Europe, but from a top down point of view, looking at the machinations of political leaders, and seeing the changes being driven by conflicts between the leadership of the different powers of Europe.

SPQR by Mary Beard
Unfortunately all contemporary or modern history will have political basis

Try Hilberg's "The Destruction of the European Jews"

hes right though. and you're a fucking faggot idiot that denies facts

>Can you think of any history books, regardless of the covered subject matter, which have absolutely no political/moral bias?
Something like a census that's just raw data. And even that's arguable, because there are reasons why some people collect data on certain things and not others. But as soon as you try to construct an explicit historical narrative, there's going to be unavoidable bias.

This is pretty great, it'd be something I'd use in a history class.

v useful, keep up the effortposts

Every historian, sadly, has an inherent bias that will affect their work. This doesn't necessary disqualify them from being worth reading as many of them are so practiced and wonderful at their craft that they will make you change your way of thinking despite their political/moral/ethical position being easy to decipher. I recommend Eric Hobsbawm.

How long have you been drinking the /pol/ / the_donald kool-aid, my epic MAGApede?

this comment btfoed /pol/tard (dotard) (uhhh..... reactionary much?!) Dudebros so hard. MAGA chuds self owned much??

No, but you will find historians who are open about their inclinations and their biases (open, rather than flagrant). To admit room for faults and blindspots. I mean, most any good historian will acknowledge their own preferences and . As long as you're not reading airport or meme trash I don't see why you wouldn't be familiar with this. You write off the field unfairly.

John Lukacs is a nice example.

The best historians will provide all the varying views of current scholarship given the available evidence, and will let reader decide.

>I've never even seen a history book but I'm going to listen to what people on /pol/ tell me is in all of them
Odds are you're trusting people who would rather watch a history channel documentary than have to sit down and read a book about history.
How about you just look for a book on a topic that doesn't have anything to do with race if it's something you're that sensitive about OP?

Marc bloc imho

good post

So having said that as a preface, some of my favourite history books;

EH Carr’s The Russian Revolution. This is a short quick introduction to the Russian revolution from somebody who is broadly favourable, though definitely not uncritical. He’s prior work included a 14 volume history of the Soviet Union that only extended up to the Second World War. He also wrote a classic work on internal relations and a defining work in historiography called “What is History?” An Economic History of the USSR by Alex Nove is an excellent thing to pair it with,

The War That Ended Peace, and Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan. Personally I think The War That Ended Peace is the best book on why the First World War happened. It’s not as easy as Guns of August (a classic of narrative history also worth reading), but it’s definitely gives you a better picture. I’d place it above the more popular Sleepwalkers. Paris 1919 gives a lot of insight into how the end of the First World War set the stage for the rest of the 20th century, including in the Middle East, a connection often neglected in WWI writing.

The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard Evans. As far as books on ‘how the Nazis happened’ I think this is best book for a lay audience. It’s t volume of a triology, all of which are great, but the first volume I think is especially good. To some extend I think the later ones bite off more than they can chew. Trying to cover every aspect of life in Germany during the war, plus the military aspects themselves results in neither being done as well as they should be. Even with that it’s still very worth a read.

The Arabs by Eugene Rogan. A sizeable history about the Arab people, starting from about 1400 or so to present.

1491 by Charles Mann, I’m definitely going to get called an “SJW” for this one but those people can fuck off. This is book that tries to give a picture of what life in North America was like prior to Columbus. It’s not out to demonize nor lionize, but show us what we have evidence for.

The Blacks in Canada by Winks. Especially if you are Canadian or know any Canadians. This is an older work, and I’m sure it’s dated now, but it’s the first book to really tie together all the scholarship on black people in Canada into one accessible volume. Black folks have lived in Nova Scotia basically as long as white people, and this is a fascinating examination of that.

Eric Hobsbawm’s 4 part history of Europe from 1789 is really good, and a classic of Marxist history writing. EP Thompson’s the Making of The English Working Class is another. Both are well respected far outside of Marxist circles.

Martin Meredith’s two books on Africa are excellent, though immensely long. If like me you knew basically nothing about Africa these are great volumes to check out

As for whether you should or shouldn’t read certain famous books;

DO read Postwar by Judt, basically as close to objective history without narrative as you can get.

DON’T read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. While it’s a classic, it was already dated before it was published, you will not get the consensus view of historians nor any discussion about the controversies in this. Richard Evans draws on Shirer as one of dozens of first hand accounts, so just read that instead.

DO read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, HOWEVER, recognize that he is not presenting a ‘consensus view’, and this book needs to be read in conjunction with other histories which balance it out.

MAYBE read Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Dimond. He’s rightfully maligned by many, but it is still an interesting take, and not not worth your time I think.

DO read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Though read the abridged version. It’s not to be taken as fact anymore but it’s still a very patrician book.

DONT read Mao: The Unknown Story. Neither of the people who wrote it are relevant experts, and as one historian said ‘the reason it’s the unknown story is because it’s largely fabrication’. This is a books basically just trying to cash in on people who love reading atrocity history.

DONT read A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes, when you are trying to understand something as complicated as the Russian Revolution but you are a burning anti communist, you aren’t going to do a good job. There are dozens of books about the Russian Revolution that don’t start off by assuming the worst of intentions about every actor involved.

Opinionated books are the best reads, fuck you OP; go and read Wikipedia or find yourself an old thicc encyclopedia.

>T. Lenin

>The best historians will provide all the varying views of current scholarship given the available evidence, and will let reader decide.
Examples? In my experience the best history books make a single argument. You could try to summarise everybody else's arguments, but that's a second-order task (historiography more than history) and not one I'd expect 'the best historians' to dedicate much time to- they'd rather be making original contributions.

>all history will have political basis
ftfy

What could they have meant by this

"'This is the only accurate account I have seen of what really happened with the price of oil in 1973. I strongly recommend reading it.' --Sheikh Zaki Yamani, former Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia

'I recommend this book to all who wish to know how the world is really run, what are the systems behind the sub-systems we perceive in the daily media, and what are the antecedents of the present global political dilemmas.' --Dr Frederick Wills, former Foreign Minister, Guyana

'For those truly interested about how the world economy functions, this book will be greatly useful. The book treats especially well the political goals of Britain, a thread in modern history all too often overlooked.' --Stephen J. Lewis, economist, City of London

'... one of the most readable books I have ever seen. It will shock people, but it is needed. William Engdahl has found a common thread that ties hundreds of events which, at first glance, appear to be unassociated.' --Leon D. Richardson, Far East Financial columnist, industrialist, advisory board, Sloan School of Management, Massachussetts Institute of Technology

amazon.com/Century-War-Anglo-American-Politics-World/dp/074532309X/ref=la_B001H6GAYG_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511413979&sr=1-2

anything that kissinger writes about is great as long as it doesnt involve america in any way

someone cap this for the next retard who asks