Can you recommend some well-written history books?

Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy is arguably the first really paradigmatic cultural history and it's known for being picturesque and beautiful.

Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II is also known for being "panoramic" though rambling and not really tied together, more concerned with the picturesque depiction of everyday life and the subtle rhythms and beats of history, and Braudel is known for being a great literary stylist in general.

Gibbon's history is known for having some of the most beautiful prose ever in the English language but I think you'd probably find its view treatment of history to be desiccated. That's part of the appeal and Gibbon is archetypically British in a way that is snide but not too cunty, but you might not like it.

Ginzburg's The Cheese and the Worms is a microhistory which is in the same sort of traditions as Braudel, coming out of the need to reproduce the real "stuff" of life as it was lived, but taking a totally different perspective.

Thank you for your suggestions.

Gibbon is an excellent writer; I haven't read the rest of these authors so I'll do so now.

i'd be hard pressed to say there's a single historical book I've read that is perfect.. the problem of history of course is that, after all, one can be educated in facts and how the present bears relation to the past... or you can do some digging and find out the majority (yes, many) historians in fact do no question their precious pre-conceived notions of a yet-to-be-history. and let's not forget, most history books I've read in my life also contain large amounts of nostalgia which seem to harbor a pretention towards "meaning of the past" and a complete ignorance of how to access the future. the problem with this is history becomes a tool for the oppressive and historians tend to defend what they believe to be progress (but in fact doesn't question the temporality of history, which is how history begins!)
there are also those furtive/innane "historians" that seemingly at will write (compound) large sections of history without a hint of strong disciplinary techniques (say, histriography, or meditating on better techniques to write a history with.) nowadays, history in classrooms is taught as an oppressive tool I'd say, and in fact, i believe it was nietzsche who noted in "untimely meditations", the temporal relations of history is fundamental for understanding just how much history is amiss from what *can* happen when one reads a historical document (or historical book.) the methods that humans find necessary for history is precisely what I'm rambling about: we want to feel transformative in history (not controlled by it.) tl;dr: history provides both context and decontext, many historians are missing the decontext I'd say, and you can see it most clearly with the bombastic and orgiastic images the media portrays.. which overwhelms and eradicates any sense of historical transformation.


I have found some good ones over the years so allow me to share with you some suggestions:

Routledge has an excellent history collective, in fact Routledge's canon which will require a google search will give you all the details. (i recommend reading routledge's wonderful book on philosophical history, 10 book volume i believe.)

if you're looking for a historian that does the "broad stroke" of historical narratives with strong dilection towards a future: Lewis Mumford is your savior. he tends to write with such force and attention of scale/magnitude that I often wonder how someone can write like that.

i read a history book on the holocaust recently that unwinds any representation you may find yourself accepting over a course of a lifetime (and doesn't do it as a caution, but as a mere way of unknowing history perhaps.) it's called "holocaust, trauma and memory" and I can find the PDF if you care (or can't find it yourself.. it's quite rare... highly recommended.)

This is fantastic.

I agree with what you have about the pre-conceived notions of historians.

I haven't read any of these authors before so I await reading them with pleasure.

The Penguin Brief Lives series are all written by good writers- Sherwin Nuland on DaVinci, Larry McMurtry on Crazy Horse, Edmund White on Proust, Peter Gay on Mozart, etc.

The Gibbon of France was also a lit crit-- St. Beuve's Port-Royal is exceptionally well written, if thoroughly autistic.

My favorite modern text of high literary quality is Huizinga's The Autumn of the Middle Ages.

Simon Schama writes well-- check out Citizens (French Rev)

And Charles Nichol-- all his titles, but the one I'm thinking of is The Creature in the Map, about Sir Walter Raliegh's last voyage to Guyana.

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>>9211851
>>9214749
There's some really good recommendations in this thread... Does anyone know if Will Durant's books are up to par with this stuff?

>>9211851

Have you seen any of the historical atlases? I wanted to see if I could get a "world history" textbook/encyclopedia set.that actually did the subject some justice, especially for those who want an impressive introduction.

I grew up reading Patrick O'Brien's Atlas of World History, and that ended up sparking a lifelong passion for history. Is that "decent" quality for its scope, and/or are there any other replacements for those who want to get a decent handle on world history and walk away with a coherent "big picture" of its trends?

Detailed Biographies might be what youre looking for
They often do an okay job at explaining parts of the hist. circumstances too

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>>9216943

I don't see how detailed biographies would help somebody understand the gist of all world history and all of the actors that have shaped it. I'm not even joking with how much I enjoyed Patrick O'Brien's Atlas of World History. Reading it cover-to-cover multiple times as a kid paved the way for me getting 5s on every AP History exam, 800s on the SAT II Subject exams, etc., without breaking a sweat. It was a fucking damn great overview of everything that ever happened, and I'm hoping that there's other books out there that can match or surpass its depth and quality.

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>>9211742
Recommend pic related and Victor Frankl's book.

>>9211742
Thucidides is great, so is Polybius.

The French Revolution: A History by Thomas Carlyle is a fantastic classic.

Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler is also great, if you're not triggered by Nietzchean reactionary themes.