Favourite historians?

Is Hobsbawn legit? I have an old copy of Age of Revolutions here, is that a good starting point?

Isn't David Irving the only one who actually spoke to the people who knew Hitler and got the papers from them that they never gave anyone else?

>Bloch & Febvre

These bitches have nothing on Braudel. Second Annales generation , best generation.

Not even close, David Irving was never ahead of any other historians.

Yeah his long 19th century trilogy is generally considered very good even if he's a bit weird in his 20th century stuff.

Yeah, it's actually a shame that David Irving is a fringe neo-Nazi because he's an incredible researcher and historian in many ways.. maybe not all ways though. The content of his bias notwithstanding, he is biased in writing narrative accounts. His passion is clearly to show the plausibility of a human narrative of the Third Reich that doesn't necessarily imply Darth Vader levels of cartoon evil. But in writing that potentially useful counterhistorical account, he's also skewing too far in the opposite direction.

And, I mean, he's a Nazi. So people don't like that.

Definitely worth reading though, if you aren't a weak pussy who needs to have people tell him how to think and feel about things. Why not?

I like Will Durant. Amazing writer.

It is still the only "single-volume" tome on the nineteenth century that is credible, and he does pretty decent at reminding you that he's a marxist. While the latter is problematic, the book is still good for catching the sweep of the era and some of the essential problems of the period (the emergence of liberalism, the issue of capital as a self-conscious entity, etc).

Considering the culture, it's very likely no one will ever again attempt anything like it, so for all of its flaws, it's what we've got as far as a total representation of the era.

This, story of civilization is wonderful

Other than that Lord Macaulay of course.

Herodotus for just being an incredible entertainer - his incessant diversions into totally random topics/events (Hippocleides story made me laugh half to death) makes the book not just the first, but best history ever.
Gibbon, Macaulay and Carlyle are also fantastic reads. Barbara Tuchman had a good philosophy of focusing on readability.

I think history that doesn't shy away from being narrative just to get more information in is always a better read. I find that you remember it more in a human way and is easier to recall and tell.

Like how I always remember Henry II because of a passage that mentioned him being old, bow-legged and seeing all his enemies dead from age, and his own sons allying with the sons of those same enemies.

Glad I'm not alone in thinking this! So much history - as in all academic writing in the postmodern era - is simply plain, dull, character-lacking, robotic text on a page. I cannot get into it. The facts are there alongside the most up-to-date evidence and findings, but I don't care because it's written so poorly.
Example - a book of mine called 501 Great Writers gives an historical count of various literary figures in the postmodern style. For Cervantes it mentions his birthplace, dates, and how he played "a significant role in the development of the modern novel", etc. Now in an old encyclopedia set of mine (Richards Topical) from the 1950s, Cervantes is given the title "He set the Whole World Laughing" and begins "If you were strolling about the streets of Madrid in the year 1605, you may have bumped into a curious little man with a little beard looking like he was in a great hurry." I mean, come on. Sure, it isn't "scholastic", but I'd much prefer the older account.

Flaubert

Roberts' is an excellent biography of Napoleon.

Read that three times now great book. Just picked up war and peace and that's making it easier to follow the geopolitics

AJP Taylor is the most readable, his little witticisms and asides are unironically hilarious. He also genuinely hated Germany and its people

Marc Bloch; Le Goff; Grimal; Said (maybe); others.

I recommend to the patriots and conservatives, products of the middle, "The myth of nations" from Geary.
It's a good start.

Royal Touch is my fav Bloch book, even over Feudal Society.

Can't stand Braudel though. Had to write a thesis on him. Really loose thinker, huge vision but awful at being reflective about it.

If you unironically care about history you are a certified 100% gay

Gibbon, Spengler, Durant, Barzun.

Who historian here?
I'm currently working on my thesis

I'm pre-comps

Fredric Jameson (I consider his career intellectual history of the genre called "theory")
Christopher Lasch
Peter Laslett

>Considering the culture, it's very likely no one will ever again attempt anything like it

the tragedy of the west

Any good (academic) works on native americans?
Algonquians, specifically.

Herodotus and Gibbon, also the only historians I've ever read.

Wikipedia says Irving is a holocaust denier, is he really or is that just what they say about anyone trying to treat the subject with some subtlety?

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Pleb here, great thread, I'm taking notes.

Does Robert Caro count?

Can anyone suggest me good history book?

He's an actual Holocaust denier loon who thinks there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz.

Not entirely sure but I think he doesn't believe in the mass gassings. (because of the lacking evidence) He did talk about mass shootings happening in Reinhard camps in Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor. (because there are legit documents)

Prescotts History of the conquest of Mexico

In general or something specific?
Tragedy and hope by Carroll Quigley is amazing to get a general picture of our history and how things work. The author was a Bill Clinton mentor (bill also read his book obviously)

The great cat massacre by Robert Darnton
Schoppenhauer's biography by Rudiger Safranski

Darnton is great. If you like Darnton, check out The Cheese and the Worms by Ginzburg.

Darnton and all the French cultural historians knew each other at Princeton. It's amazing. Darnton and Geertz worked together closely, taught a seminar together I think, while Natalie Zemon Davis was there (another good one to read if you liked Darnton).

>Natalie Zemon Davis
Do you, by any chance, happen to have a pdf of her The return of Martin Guerre? I've always wanted to read that but have only seen the movie so far.

It's on soulseek if you can't find it elsewhere.

For all you history fiends: how does one actually go about reading history? I find myself reading expansive tomes about the history of Greece for example, and remembering very little actual details, only a basic overview. How do I establish a foundation that would allow me to speak about these topics with some authority?

In other words: how do you all read history? Do you find yourself annotating or taking notes?

>Can't stand Braudel though. Had to write a thesis on him. Really loose thinker, huge vision but awful at being reflective about it.

what went wrong?

Madison Grant.

>Do you find yourself annotating or taking notes?
Yes. It's necessary.