Veeky Forums is shit. What are some Veeky Forums's favourite history books? pls no Guns Germs and Steel

I've seen Guns Germs and Steel memed about or disparaged several times here. What's the deal with that book and what's wrong with it?

What's wrong with Guns Germs and Steel. I mean, yeah, it's a bit overrated since its TV documentary hit Netflix all those years ago, but that doesn't make it objectively bad, just overrated and simplistically misunderstood by normies.

Guns Germs and Steel was a book which became massively popular. Aside from the generic response to shit on things which are popular this led to it being treated as some sort of grand explanatory text which would provide deep and unrivaled insight into human history and society.
This simply isn't the case, it represents one view on history which is heavily argued about among many others.
Of course at the same this is also not to say it's useless. Lots of academics and historians have a pretty high opinion of it.

It's a podcast, but not a shitty edutainment one hosted by giggling faggots like the McElroys or something - I've just started listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History and it has been amazing

If I wanted to read it, what could be another title that could counterpoint it? The second title doesn't need to be written in RESPONSE to GGS, but what would be another history book that offers different interpretations of the same ideas, so that I wouldn't take the ideas in GGS for granted)

I think it raises some interesting ideas but saying all human development is caused by one thing is always dumb

Both saying "Guns Germs and Steel" claimed it could account for ALL human development, and calling the sum total of resources available to a population "one thing," are reductive AF

James Burke - Connections

It's short but Between Man and Beast is pretty great. It's about the first guy to bring proof that the gorilla existed to Europe and America, and how that influenced the evolution debate and America's emancipation debate, both of which were going on at the same time.

It also just has cool factoids, like European explorers would take quinine to prevent malaria. Not being doctors they would do shit like take ten times the recommended dose, to be extra sure.

This got them high as fuck. That's why a lot of early expeditions reported crazy shit like the ground shaking and giant dragons and serpents.

Well I don't think you need to read something as a counterpoint to it provided you approach it understanding that Diamond massively emphasizes the role of the environment in affecting human societies and doesn't place much emphasis on other perspectives.

If you really want a different perspective on world history I suppose you could read something along the lines of "The Rise of the West" by William H. McNeill. It's also a book which tries to take a much larger view of history too explain why some societies are more successful than others, focusing more on the roles of culture/technology/civilizations.
Having suggested it I should mention that its most recent edition was published in the nineties so work from the assumption that a lot of its material is out of date.

Alternatively if you have the good luck to have access to a university library I would just go and look up a dozen different review. You'll quickly get a grasp of what kind of problems academics had with his book when it was released (but also why they liked it).

I'm currently reading "The Heart of Europe" by Peter Wilson. It's a history for the Holy Roman Empire from 800 to 1806, not just politically but religiously, structurally, economically, and culturally. I highly recommenced it, it really puts the whole middle ages in the new light.

As an American newspaper said at the time: "The Fleet has assaulted its jailer, but remains in jail."

Yeah, I like medieval history in general. And it's fascinating how the they viewed the world in an entirely different way. Might be part of why I like 40k

Pretty much THE book on Prohibition in the US and (to a lesser extent) Canada. Must-read for CoC

Oh, also if you've seen Ken Burns' Prohibition this is one of the main sources he drew from

>The Art of Not Being Governed
If you haven' check out his earlier book Seeing Like A State, its worth reading.

Recently read Lost To The West by Lars Brownsworth. It was well written, but I don't know enough about Byzantium to say if it was good history. I had the feeling throughout that he was kind of fanboying.

OP here. I've got no beef with Jared Diamond, and I think GGS is a well-written book, albeit somewhat introductory. It comments on debates about long-term history and the importance of the environment on human processes, and it does that well. It's a solid book for what it is: a book for people getting interested in history.

I just put that on my original post because I'm an autistic nerd who likes history books and is a little bit sick of people mentioning it all the time. That's all there is to it.

But it's not introductory, it's just introductory level. It doesn't really give you a starting point for learning about this stuff, it gives the illusion of explaining everything and because people read it and think they already know all their is to know, they generally don't bother reading any more.

Montaillou
The Odyssey and The Aeneid
The Myth of the Peaceful Savage
The Fifth Sun

Jared Diamond is shit.

MONTAILLOU IS THE SHIT, GODDAMN
this is the shit i'm talking about when I say that the frogs know how to fucking write history

this book is literally and absolutely Le Roy Ladurie saying "okay, my man Braudel was hot shit, but fuck the Mediterranean I'm writing about some crazy village and it's going to be AS GOOD AS HIS SHIT"

also wtf Odyssey and Aeneid damn son we talking historiography here not some crazy-ass greco-roman poems

mad respect for you though for mentioning Montaillou that shit was hot fire