/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2746052]

what are some key historians and history writers to read?

i've been trying to read more about history as a pastime, but I'm having a major trouble finding the proper material, most well-known books today are written by popular historians who are usually shitty and I can't filter through the bullshit and reach the good books.

throw me some names - it doesn't matter the period or anything, really. I just need a starting point or something.

[Anonymous No.2746078]

gibbon, mommsen, hume, mccauley, tacitus, livy, polybius, thucydides, herodotus, xenophon, donald kagan

[Anonymous No.2746094]

Precopius.

[Anonymous No.2746125]

>>2746078
Don't.

Look at some Wikipedia articles on the subjects you're interested in. The references list is where you should be looking: many, many authors that you can choose based on newspaper reviews.

[Anonymous No.2746137]

>>2746125

[Anonymous No.2746162]

>>2746137

He asked for an entry point and I gave it to him. Stick to your Macaulay, faggot. Read all about that anti-Scot, biased and bullshit James I shit.

[Anonymous No.2746183]

>>2746162
why would you avoid reading seminal historiographical works because you think the author is biased when 99% of historians come from pagan and christian slave-owning societies

[Anonymous No.2746196]

>>2746183
>seminal

[Anonymous No.2746199]

>>2746052

I am partial to both Peter Galison and Eric Foner

[Anonymous No.2746208]

>>2746078
Tacitus is fucking hilarious, he rips into everyone but Agricola. Quite easy to read to

[Anonymous No.2747101]

>>2746052
Julius Caesar and Salustius.

[Anonymous No.2747108]

Michel Foucault.

[Anonymous No.2747112]

Yesterday I would have suggest A People's History of the United States but after reading its chapter on 9/11 I discovered it was nothing more than liberal masochist trash.

[Anonymous No.2747199]

The best way to avoid garbage, is simply to avoid americans. That alone cuts 80% of the crap. They are not trustable even to write their own history, as shit like Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck's books about Jefferson and Lincoln being bestsellers suggests.

[Anonymous No.2747203]

Read about conflicts or periods you know nothing about, personally I like journals of people who actually were there, Red Star Over China tells the story of Mao and the uprising of the rural population in china from their perspective.

[Anonymous No.2747212]

Anthony Beevor, Ian Kershaw, Robert Fisk, Thomas Macaulay, Hugh Trevor-Roper

[CØRåX No.2747214]

>>2747112
>implying Zinn isn't God-tier

[Anonymous No.2747226]

I just finished Thucydides' Poloponnesian War, after Herodotus' histories. Excellent books that are full of interesting subjects. I just had to get Xenophon's Hellenika to finish the Peloponnesian War since it ends mid sentence.

[Anonymous No.2747229]

>>2747226
>Poloponnesian War
Damnit

[Anonymous No.2747238]

>>2746162
What better place to start than the very first Historians on a subject that shaped western society as we know it?

[Anonymous No.2747434]

>>2747112
Ugh. Will you stop letting 4chan persuade you to egg on these stupid little gut instincts that say, omg political correctness so annoying. It isnt authentic, its just shallow and petty.

[Anonymous No.2747649]

>>2747112
Zinn was awesome.

[Anonymous No.2747685]

>>2747112
What's it like living in a Saturday morning cartoon?

[Anonymous No.2748800]

>>2747229
>>2747226
>Polyponesian War

Tumors everywhere.


>>2747199
Protip: They aren't historians, those books are talking heads reducing a prismatic person or event in history to support an insular, single-facet worldview.