Recommend history books?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I specifically would love to read history books with a theme that goes like this: "All the archeological evidence, written record, and other primary sources pointed towards Conclusion A and we've upheld Conclusion A for 500 years...but new findings have shattered that and we are now forced to consider Conclusion B, and this book explains why."

There is so much about our history that we don't know and even as a kid, I took history narratives with a grain of salt. I kind of want some fresh perspectives. Any recs?

I *think* I know what you're looking for, but at the same time I see you're looking for the dramatic and conspirational rather than a genuine quest for knowledge and truth. If you're talking about recent history aka the last 500 years, it's extremely well-document. Historians are going to be subject to their own biases, but the data and sources are all out there and it's all been turned over extremely carefully and millions of times. Nothing is deliberately hidden. What changes are biases and prejudices. Recent publications like 1619 are riddled with deliberate distortions and quite a few outright fabrications (and it was primarily not written by professional historians but journalists) because the creators had an axe to grind and it was to their advantage to frame American history in a different light.

The further back you go then the records become murkier. So what exactly are you looking for?

Are you arguing that history as it's commonly presented outside of academia is somehow NOT "riddled with deliberate distortions and quite a few outright fabrications....because the creators had an axe to grind and it was to their advantage to frame American history in a different light?"

Oh those history books that give cursory mention to that "War of Northern Aggression".

New poster here. No one credible does that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven't read it yet, but friends—highly informed friends as well as interested complere amateurs—have been raving about The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, which seems custom tailored for your wish list.

I’ve heard similar raves about “The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe” but I haven’t cracked it yet. Sounds right up your alley, OP.

[Anonymous]

One of my favorite books is The Fever of 1721. It's about the smallpox epidemic in Boston. It was fascinating!

More than fifty years before the American Revolution, Boston was in revolt against the tyrannies of the Crown, Puritan Authority, and Superstition. This is the story of a fateful year that prefigured the events of 1776.

In The Fever of 1721, Stephen Coss brings to life an amazing cast of characters in a year that changed the course of medical history, American journalism, and colonial revolution, including Cotton Mather, the great Puritan preacher, son of the president of Harvard College; Zabdiel Boylston, a doctor whose name is on one of Boston's grand avenues; James and his younger brother Benjamin Franklin; and Elisha Cooke and his protegee; Samuel Adams.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25814342-the-fever-of-1721?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=9aUJy4z575&rank=1

[Anonymous]

Pharma by Gerald Posner.

It has an insane amount of history about the pharma industry and the Sacklers. The number of citations is crazy, and Posner even uncovers brand new never known facts by piecing together all sorts of hidden information.

[Anonymous]

There's a great, fairly recent biography of George Washington called, "You Never Forget Your First." Readable and fun with a modern (feminist) sensibility. It doesn't "cancel" GW (fairly or unfairly), but it talks about parts of his life that were overlooked by traditional historians. I'd call it a respectful non-hagiography. And did I mention that it's a fun read?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I *think* I know what you're looking for, but at the same time I see you're looking for the dramatic and conspirational rather than a genuine quest for knowledge and truth. If you're talking about recent history aka the last 500 years, it's extremely well-document. Historians are going to be subject to their own biases, but the data and sources are all out there and it's all been turned over extremely carefully and millions of times. Nothing is deliberately hidden. What changes are biases and prejudices. Recent publications like 1619 are riddled with deliberate distortions and quite a few outright fabrications (and it was primarily not written by professional historians but journalists) because the creators had an axe to grind and it was to their advantage to frame American history in a different light.

The further back you go then the records become murkier. So what exactly are you looking for?

Hon, if you actually believe what you're trying to peddle here, I've got a bridge to sell you. What an utterly moronic statement.

[Anonymous]

I think you just describe the recent book "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity."

From this review:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/graeber-wengrow-dawn-of-everything-history-humanity/620177/

"The Dawn of Everything is written against the conventional account of human social history as first developed by Hobbes and Rousseau; elaborated by subsequent thinkers; popularized today by the likes of Jared Diamond, Yuval Noah Harari, and Steven Pinker; and accepted more or less universally. The story goes like this. Once upon a time, human beings lived in small, egalitarian bands of hunter-gatherers (the so-called state of nature). Then came the invention of agriculture, which led to surplus production and thus to population growth as well as private property. Bands swelled to tribes, and increasing scale required increasing organization: stratification, specialization; chiefs, warriors, holy men.

Eventually, cities emerged, and with them, civilization—literacy, philosophy, astronomy; hierarchies of wealth, status, and power; the first kingdoms and empires. Flash forward a few thousand years, and with science, capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution, we witness the creation of the modern bureaucratic state. The story is linear (the stages are followed in order, with no going back), uniform (they are followed the same way everywhere), progressive (the stages are “stages” in the first place, leading from lower to higher, more primitive to more sophisticated), deterministic (development is driven by technology, not human choice), and teleological (the process culminates in us).

It is also, according to Graeber and Wengrow, completely wrong. Drawing on a wealth of recent archaeological discoveries that span the globe, as well as deep reading in often neglected historical sources (their bibliography runs to 63 pages), the two dismantle not only every element of the received account but also the assumptions that it rests on.

[Anonymous]

Bump.