Please help me learn world history!

[Anonymous]

Help? Can you recommend any readable, beginner-friendly histories of countries, regions, periods, etc?

I desperately need to learn more world and regional history, but I find it dreadfully boring. Every book I try is a dry recitation of "Person 2,346 did this. Then Person 2,347 did this," with no sense of overarching narrative or "why" and too many names to track. I also find it overwhelming and don't know where to start. Classical Greece and Rome seems too distant to be useful, but jumping in to modern history makes me feel lost.

I would love to find something with a "hook." For instance, I have enjoyed reading personal histories of everyday Americans colonists and settlers told through their diaries or letters. Following one person's story makes understanding the period and its historical events more digestible to me. But I can't find anything similar for world history. Any ideas?

[Anonymous]

Watch the crown on Netflix (the first two or three seasons) and use that as a jumping off point. Spiral out to find out real, fiction, etc and look up related events. Do this with other movies/shows on different periods/eraa.

[Anonymous]

Okay so my recommendation *is* about Ancient Rome and it doesn’t have personal history, but I love this guys’s lectures on Rome from The Great Courses! Audible has them for one credit but I just got mine from the library. Thee great courses also has one about Alexander the Great and Hellenistic Greece, but Gregory Aldrete’s lectures are my favorite.

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-rise-of-rome

[Anonymous]

Guns, Germs, and Steel

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Guns, Germs, and Steel

or 1491 by Mann

[Anonymous]

Read “Don’t know much about history” by Ken Davis

[Anonymous]

You might want to focus on biographies rather than general history books.

Personally, I’m partial to historical fiction. You get the important events, but the people are rounded out to become more relatable, and the stories come to life. Costain is my favorite historical fiction author (although some of his books are better than others), and I especially like his book Below the Salt about the Magna Carta (although it is atypical of his books in that it contains a supernatural element and jumps back and forth between that era and the contemporary time it was written). Michener’s The Source is also on my list to read. Somebody whose opinion I trust recommended Ken Follett, but I haven’t read any of his yet.


Completely as an aside, there’s a YouTube channel called Tasting History that I really enjoy. The host recreates a historic dish and then explains the history surrounding it. He’s done dishes from all over the world and from different time periods.
https://m.youtube.com/c/tastinghistory

[Anonymous]

I love history and love going down wormholes and reading deeply on something that grabs my attention. I think overarching histories do tend to be a bit dry because they span a lot. My suggestions are to choose something specific to start with and maybe find a documentary or podcast series that you like. With a good narrator, these an be more engaging than reading a book.

Thought Lucy Worsley's 3 part History of the Tsars on Amazon was excellent. Could be an interesting place to start given everything that's going on with Russia at the moment. Russian history is pretty fascinating and, once you have watched that, you could read/listen/watch something about Russia in the 20th century and it will give you an excellent background to what is happening at the moment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Guns, Germs, and Steel

I was going to say this, too. Then follow it up with Collapse.

[Anonymous]

I love the Smithsonian magazine for this. It covers a wide range of topics. On history, it always starts with a recent discovery, which makes it exciting because you feel like you're in a front row seat.

[Anonymous]

Salt: A World History

Africa is Not a Country

The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

Devil in the Grove

Three Tigers, One Mountain

Black Wave

Caste

Anything by Erik Larson

Basically anything you read that tries to take on the topic of world history in one bite is going to read like a textbook and be incomplete. If you focus on regions or events you will have better luck with engaging material.

[Anonymous]

If you like your history with humor, I love Sarah Vowell. Reading or audio - both are great!

[Anonymous]

The Anarchy is a great book about the East India Company (arguably one of the world's first evil corporations)

[Anonymous]

Are these YouTube videos and such accurate?

[Anonymous]

I have been thinking about this too. My plan is to find late elementary/middle grade books on countries and read those to start. Gives a big picture and then I can dig deeper with some context.

I have read Guns Germs and Steel, Salt, Caste, Erik Larsen. Those are all good and will hold your interest.

Also like a PP mentioned, historical fiction (or present day fiction) set in parts of the world I don’t know well. Some examples - Pachinko, Tsar of Love and Techno, books by Adichie, Cutting for Stone.