Is there a definitive list of the best history books one should read?

>>9837020

A People's History of the US
Guns Germs and Steel
1421: The Year China Discovered the World
Crash Course History (not a book it's a youtube show but whatever)
Anything by Bill O'Reilly

>>9837047
>Crash Course History
oh boy

>>9837057
it's a meme ya dip

Wikipedia. It's functionally the same

>>9837062
I was going to point out the one that would spark the most debate but looking at the list again I feel cheated.

>>9837071
There's already a thread about it.

>>9837047
If you want a serious starter book, read An Atlas of World History by Patrick O'Brien.

start with jm robert's history of the world. if you like it, will durant's series is worth checking out. from there, youll have a good sense of what youre into and will have plenty of sources

In terms of historical writing and analysis, I think Gibbon or Hume if your are English speaking.

>>9837047
Literally none of these books except GGS. This guy is a fucking pseud, he reeks of it.

>>9837020
saying this without a subject triggers the history nut.

Since you have Napoleon, I will say Citizens by Schama or Napoleon the Great

>>9837551
>recommends GGS
>calls someone else a pseud

lol

>>9837047
This has got to be bait. But if it is, is 1421 bad?

>>9837551
>reading guns germs and steel
>NOT reading history books written by actual historians, but by ornithologists who don't know shit.
I bet you liked Lies My Teacher Told Me too, and that your favorite book is by John Green.

Renegade History by Thaddeus Russell

>>9837827


Within the academic world, the book (and Menzies' "1421 hypothesis") is dismissed by sinologists and professional historians.[29][30][31] In 2004, historian Robert Finlay severely criticized Menzies in the Journal of World History for his "reckless manner of dealing with evidence" that led him to propose hypotheses "without a shred of proof".[6] Finlay wrote:

>Unfortunately, this reckless manner of dealing with evidence is typical of 1421, vitiating all its extraordinary claims: the voyages it describes never took place, Chinese information never reached Prince Henry and Columbus, and there is no evidence of the Ming fleets in newly discovered lands. The fundamental assumption of the book—that the Yongle Emperor dispatched the Ming fleets because he had a "grand plan", a vision of charting the world and creating a maritime empire spanning the oceans—is simply asserted by Menzies without a shred of proof ... The reasoning of 1421 is inexorably circular, its evidence spurious, its research derisory, its borrowings unacknowledged, its citations slipshod, and its assertions preposterous ... Examination of the book's central claims reveals they are uniformly without substance.[32]

A group of scholars and navigators—Su Ming Yang of the United States, Jin Guo-Ping and Malhão Pereira of Portugal, Philip Rivers of Malaysia, Geoff Wade of Singapore—questioned Menzies' methods and findings in a joint message:[27]

>His book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, is a work of sheer fiction presented as revisionist history. Not a single document or artifact has been found to support his new claims on the supposed Ming naval expeditions beyond Africa...Menzies' numerous claims and the hundreds of pieces of "evidence" he has assembled have been thoroughly and entirely discredited by historians, maritime experts and oceanographers from China, the U.S., Europe and elsewhere.[27]

My Diary Desu