History books and non-fiction worth reading. Let's go

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Secondhand Time - Alexievich

literally the reason >>>/his/ was created

English Opium-Eater

File: 220px-Did_six_million_really_die.jpg (31KB, 220x317px) Image search: [Google]

31KB, 220x317px

>>8810177
Spoiler Alert: nope

File: fidel-y-malcom-x.jpg (42KB, 500x362px) Image search: [Google]

42KB, 500x362px

autobiography of malcolm x as told by alex haley

>>8810182
i prefer >>>/hers/

File: Ivan Aivazovsky - Battle of Sinop.jpg (337KB, 2067x1400px) Image search: [Google]

337KB, 2067x1400px

>>8810182
But that became a /pol/ hangout. /his/ standing for history revisionism

File: 1475199736199.png (2MB, 2000x1262px) Image search: [Google]

2MB, 2000x1262px

the Landmark series of old historical works e.g. Herdotus Histories and Arrian Campaigns of Alexander. other than that, read all of the big name historical works like Gibbon's Decline and Fall. You can get the basic facts (which are often more accurate) from wikipedia. what makes these worthwhile is that you get a sense of the author and his time.

Russia Against Napoleon by Lieven

a perspective you don't frequently get in English language works

Anyway, Soviet History grad student here

If anyone's interested in specific things I can give some reqs

>>8810438
Best overall history book of the SU?

>>8810444

The First Socialist Society by Hosking (0674304438)

>>8810461
And for a follow up?

>>8810331
Great WWI book and excellent writer. I recommend The Sleepwalkers by Christopher Clark to follow with another WWI causes one.

>>8810575
Chronologically, after this you would most likely want to check out something about the fall of the Soviet Union. Lenin's Tomb by Remnick (0679751254) is an entertaining introduction to that, though it's not a history book.

A very short read that I also find very relevant to picking up where Hosking stops (aka Soviet collapse) is Uncivil Society by Kotkin (0679642765)

Voices from Chernobyl by Alexievich as well

My diary desu

Gulag Archipelago

All the pinkos on this board have clearly not read it

File: M9ipb6GcE.gif (6KB, 427x580px) Image search: [Google]

6KB, 427x580px

Does anyone else never read history or non-fiction because they can never get rid of the doubt that it could be wrong?

People tell me to try to logically think about what I'm reading, but something can be logically right but be wrong, and a history book can point to evidence but it can turn out the evidence is made up. How do we know?

>>8812420

Rarely is something going to be entirely wrong. You can have certain ideas that are overturned by later evidence but they'll still give true and interesting information.

There's nothing wrong with being wrong, we all have to rely on the best available evidence.

>>8812469
>There's nothing wrong with being wrong

Yes until I post about it on 4chan and then everyone laughs at me and calls me a pleb.

>>8812515

Even on 4chan you only get called a faggot/pleb for being wrong if you double down after your argument falls apart.

Most of the time anyway, the rest of the time who cares.

What is a good Holocaust book?

I got sort of soured reading Night and Diary of Anne Frank in high school because a lot of Night was definitely made up and it isn't clear to me how much 'editing' took place with the Diary of Anne Frank by her father.

Definitely not a Holocaust denier, btw, I just want a book on it that isn't shit.

A Tree of Culture by Ralph Linton

>>8812981
Holocaust is fiction

>>8812420
That's what makes it fun!

>>8813071
Look around you

>>8810321
This is literal bullshit. Reading Gibbon is a complete and utter waste of time. The only thing you get from pre-modern historians is factual information which is ultimately derived from sources which have been read uncritically.

Classical histories are nice to read, but classical historical writing is based on rhetorics rather than on actual history in the sense we understand it. Tacitus is fun and entertaining to read, but it's literally rhetorics and moralism about people he has never met nor read properly about.

>>8810177
What's the time frame or themes you're interested in? History is a pretty pluralist science - on the one hand there is a massive variety in ages and subjects, from Meji Japan to the Dutch Republic to Peron Argentina. Combined with that, there are certain paradigms (Annales, Cultural Turn), broad approaches (social, political, cultural, mentality, demographical, gender etc.) combined with a specific historical/historiographical/methodoligical approach.

It really does depend on the kinda stuff you're into to give a decent answer to this question. I'm a Research Master student in history.

Gimme recs on Rome and fundie Christianity in America. Need those recs, fellas.

What are the best books about basques?