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The Best History Books 2018

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119 pointsbenbreen28 comments

Off-topic: I majored in history for my BA. For the first year out of college, I struggled to find work, and was worried that I had made a terrible choice. 8 years on, after supplementing my studies with essentially an Associate’s in CS, my view has changed significantly. Here are the most useful skills that I’ve gained from my study of history:

* There’s a phrase among historians that writing history is like drinking in an oceanful of information and pissing out a cup. As a technical writer, this is obviously highly relevant to my work. But I’d venture that this skill will resonate with any “knowledge worker.”

* Towards the end of the major you start thinking about historiography, which is the study of writing history. You question what kinds of primary sources writers are basing their arguments on, and what kinds of biases (or “perspectives” to use a more neutral term) these writers are bringing to their analyses. A relevant skill in this age of “fake news.”

* History professors place a lot of value on concise writing. It’s obvious to me now why that would be the case, but at the time I didn’t make the connection.

* I went into the major with a vague desire to learn more about how society works. In that regard the field definitely does not disappoint. I enjoyed how open-ended the field of inquiry was. Yet at the same time you have to stay somewhat grounded in reality. I.e. when you write about a topic you have to provide primary sources that validate your argument.

Anyways, I don’t have any major agenda for writing all of this, other than the fact that it’s Saturday morning and I’m hyped on coffee and I figured someone might enjoy considering how studying history is still relevant to the modern workforce.

A philosophy graduate who had art history as minor here. I can totally relate to your comment!

I have an MA in history and now I'm a software engineer. I agree with pretty much everything you said.

However, when people who plan to major in history ask me for advice I tell them to major in something more marketable and make history their minor. I would recommend the same thing to any prospective humanities major. The humanities are wonderful but you can be exposed to them while pursuing a marketable major that will make your life after college a lot easier.

> I tell them to major in something more marketable and make history their minor.

I agree with the gist of this. As I said earlier, my job prospects really opened up once I had an Associate’s in CS. So I don’t know if you necessarily must major in the marketable field and minor in the humanities. Majoring in the humanities and minoring in the marketable field worked out fine for me. But your approach is probably the safer strategy.

I've found myself reading less and less fiction and more and more history books. The stories being real make them more interesting.

Anyone have a suggestion for American history? I am looking for something that focuses on how America grew into the leading world power in such a short amount of time comparatively.

Pairing A Patriot's History and A People's History makes for some interesting perspective. They don't really offer explicit points/counterpoints, but they certainly frame things differently over similar time periods (which cover America's coming of age to a powerful world presence).

https://www.amazon.com/Patriots-History%C2%AE-United-States-...

https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0062...

I know these books are great but do you know any book which is shorter read, sitting around 1000 pages each those are quite heavy reads

A People’s History is ~800 pages and clips along at a good pace. I don’t know that you can go much shorter with an overview of such a long period without sacrificing a lot of substance. I’d highly recommend making the investment into A People’s History - easily one of the most significant histories of America - and Howard Zinn’s other work if you end up appreciating it.

You can read it online at the link below if you want to dip in without too much commitment. It's quite an easy read, targeted at high-school level, which you may or may not find annoying: http://historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html

The kids version is a lot shorter, not sure if it is just more terse or what: "A Young People's History of the United States"

I am wary of A People's History myself, as he tends to pick his conclusions first, then cherry-pick anecdotes to support those conclusions. These articles are good overviews of some of the issues:

Howard Zinn's History Lessons: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/howard-zinns-history...

Undue Certainty: Where Howard Zinn's A People's History Falls Short: https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/Wineburg...

While it may be interesting to pair A People's History with A Patriot's History, it is like watching a news network interview where they pull in the "person from the left" and "person from the right" to argue at each other. One is usually better off hearing a single person who acknowledges both sides of the issue.

I don't have a single book for you as that is a very broad theme, but honestly something textbook-y might be what you're looking for. Google for good surveys of American history. If you want to understand America as a world power, I would supplement a general textbook with some economic and military history. WW2 and the Cold War will be very important. A big factor in America's later dominance was the fact that so many other world powers were utterly devastated by the Second World War and could not maintain their former influence, so understanding the transformative half-century between the 1940s and 1990s will be key to answering your question. But I think you'll also be interested in the late 1800s (especially the post-Civil War period) as that is where you see some of America's industrial power really start to pick up. That's the era of major technological changes like the telegraph and railroads as well as the emergence of industrial powerhouses like Standard Oil.

Jill Lepore's These Truths is a good survey of American history published this year. Its focus is on the notion of America as experiment i.e. Will Democracy work? What makes it possible? And the wild exaggerations that result.

Five Books just published a list this week. https://fivebooks.com/best-books/dr-patrick-porter-on-the-ri...

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States from 2014 is very illuminating of the strategy of colonization and empire building in the US. It also connects the dots to the present day very well.

I enjoyed Bill Bryson's "Made In America" which approaches American history through its effect on the English language. A very entertaining and informative read.

https://www.amazon.com/Made-America-Informal-History-Languag...

Tom Holland is a historian? heh

Jill Lepore’s These Truths was the best history book this year. Perhaps this decade.

Sounds like this book has a serious number of issues.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/cr/B07BLKWBYT/ref=mw_dp_cr

Seems that the reviewer himself, S. J. Snyder, attributes a number of errors just based on his interpretative ideological slant.

I read the whole review. There’s nothing from Snyder that strikes me as an ideological critique. Each point is tied to factual errors leading to incorrect analysis and interpretation/presentation. There are a couple other reviews alongside Snyder that detail more factual and interpretive errors. What ideological slant are you seeing in Snyder’s critique?

When you make such extraordinary subjective claims, please also bother write a small blurb as to what you found so enthralling about it. Because from I read, people are calling out this book out for its terrible bloopers and the author not doing his homework on facts.

The author, Jill Lepore, has been called out for not doing her homework on facts.

You should give the book a shot. It's received some pretty[0] killer[1] reviews[2] from sources more authoritative than an Amazon rando. And even if you go pretty far right[3], the reviews stay largely positive.

[0] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/11/08/jill-lepore-amer...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/books/review/jill-lepore-...

[2] https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/sc-books-the...

[3] https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/11/17/liberal-h...

You appear to be alleging there is no value or merit in the pointing out of blatant factual errors by an “Amazon rando”. Lepore is well-known. It is unsurprising there would be “killer reviews” of her latest work in various publications. I’m a former—undergraduate and graduate—student of history. That Lepore’s latest work contains argument based on factual errors is a problem for a history. That there are effusive reviews does little to negate calling out factual errors and omissions. That an “Amazon rando” is one of many individuals citing the factual errors provides little insight into which review is more authoritative. In history, the facts themselves are authoritative—and far more so than the sweeping prose within which one writes about or reviews them. If a history can’t get simple facts right, the work starts to look lazy—despite its page count. When there’s a trend of factual errors and omissions—especially when the analysis and interpretation of history is built upon such errors and omissions—it severely weakens credibility. That’s not to say the book isn’t a delightful romp through the past, but a history demands diligent care with facts.

But how do you know the rando is right? As in, aren't his corrections just as likely to factually mistaken as the original? The Amazon reviewer doesn't site sourcse.

Since I'm not a history, I don't feel comfortable judging accuracy. Instead, I would trust a historian's peers writing reviews in trusted publications.

Thanks for correcting. I briefly did pause to think it could be a 'her' (as I recognized Jill is commonly a female name), and even went as far as doing a half-hearted second skim of the Amazon URL, but still I lazily went with what my buggy "system 1"[+] endorsed.

[+] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow

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