There’s plenty of good places to start. Far more important than having a sort of “best” book on history would be having one that highly engages you. In that regard, biographies of particular leaders tend to be more engaging, since there’s a protagonist and we can generally understand their story. Ron Chernow is an excellent biographer, and both “Titan” (about John Rockefeller) and “Washington: A Life” are both pretty good starting places, since if you’re American, you already know at least a basic understanding of the major cities of the time, the economy, the laws, etc.
Again, when starting, I think being engaging is key. Eiji Yoshikawa wrote two excellent period accurate historical fictions, “Musashi” about the famous samurai and “Taiko” about the second greater unifier of Japan, Hideyoshi Toyotomi. Both are very engaging and great jumping-off points into Japan’s Sengoku Warring States era.
I generally recommend against broad historical overviews of a time period of large nation as a starting place, because it’s too easy to get lost. One possible exception might be Jan Morris’s “Heaven’s Command” about the British Empire. Morris takes an approach that makes history much more understandable and relatable by telling the story of the British Empire through the lens of individual characters. Morris will, for instance, take a British lieutenant who is being sent to India and follow his journey by steamship in getting to India, the ports he stopped at, discussions of the sights he saw, discussions of the treatment he received for malaria, etc. Morris uses all real figures and reals from letters, newspapers, telegraphs, archived records, war plans, etc. It makes the history really come alive even if you don’t necessarily have the whole regional context. Morris’s followup “Pax Britannica” is also excellent, though you’d want to read Heaven’s Command first. Morris is very pro-British and says so in the introduction to the book, but I think is also very fair about British mishandlings of Ireland, the Sepoy Mutiny, the Kabul Retreat, etc.
I think there’s a lot of value in reading histories written 100 to 200 years ago, because you learn about two eras: the era that is written about, and the recent past. Count Egon Corti’s 1927 “Rise of House Rothschild” is a masterpiece for understanding both the establishment of the international banking system and for (indirectly) understanding Monarchical Europe at its final apex.
Again, the work being engaging and meaningful to you is really important. H.W. Brands’s “The First American” about Benjamin Franklin is excellent but I wouldn’t recommend it; too long and boring. (I’m listening to it on audiobook and it’s 95% complete, yet taking a lot of discipline to finish it; Brands is thorough and rigorous, arguably too rigorous). Getting pleasure out of the book and engaging well with it builds momentum, which is key.
Audiobooks can be great for a couple reasons: first, a compelling narrator can really make a story come alive. Second, if there’s (for instance) some confusing troop movements between cities that have since been renamed, if it’s written it’ll throw you off (at least, that throws me off), but if it’s audio, you’ll just keep moving. Early on when studying history, names and places you don’t recognize come at you frequently—in my experience, the work to dig into relatively minor characters early on isn’t worth it. Like, when learning about the end of the Roman Republic and its transition to Roman Empire, the names Marius, Sulla, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, Mithradates, and a whole lot more come up—but on your first goings-through, I’d say don’t dig too deeply. Eventually you’ll want to follow up with all of these characters and understand them, but it’s nearly impossible to fully get one’s mind simultaneously around Caesar/Pompey/Crassus/Cicero (and all the other supporting characters) and likewise Marius/Sulla and their supporting characters, and the intervening years after Sulla’s dictatorship and before the next wave of civil wars and threats.
So—audio can help. On that score, the narrator is key—I’ll often choose audiobooks based on narrator instead of author. Adequate-writing-great-narration tends to be more engaging than great-writing-adequate-narration. I really, really like Charlton Griffin as a narrator; “Charlemagne: From the Hammer to the Cross” is nearly mesmerizing at times and is almost perfectly produced. His audio version of Julius Caesar’s autobiographical Commentaries about the Gallic Wars is also terrific.
Whilst on the audio kick, the “Hardcore History” podcast by Dan Carlin is exceptional. “Death Throes of the Roman Republic” would be a terrific series to start with from that podcast. “Ghosts of the Ostfront” is horrific and will likely put you in a bad mood for a few weeks (so be careful), but it was the first time I fully started to grasp the savagery and desperation of the Eastern Front in World War II.
What else? Autobiographies are usually worthwhile, as are technical books or histories, especially ones written by leading figures. Machiavelli’s “The Prince” should be read sooner or later. If you wind up deciding to read about the early German Empire, “Moltke on War” translates and curates orders, military texts, and doctrine documents from Helmuth von Moltke, who is perhaps the single most underrated military figure in history. (He was the Chief of the military when Bismarck was Chancellor; Bismarck, being a genius at multiple disciplines and immensely quotable, gets more attention from as a symbolic figure of the era, but in terms of adjusting disciplines to emerging technology—telegraphs, railroads, troop movements, reporting structures, resources, munitions, setting hierarchies of objectives, etc—Moltke is one of the greatest at this, and he’s probably the best general ever to dictate and write the sheer volume of writings for the military academy and instructions for his officers).
To get to “threshold 2” insight, fall in love with a particular region’s history, and follow it forwards and backwards multiple generations, and examine individual lives of important figures from multiple perspectives. Read about Julius Caesar from multiple perspectives, read about Pompey, read about Crassus, etc. Go east a bit and read about Mithradates the Great (“The Poison King” is a good book on him). Read about Cleopatra and Anthony. Go back in time and read about Hannibal, Fabius, and Scipio. (“Scipio Africanus” by BH Liddel-Hart is really, really good; an amazing short work). Start connecting the dots. Read Cicero and Caesar’s works.
“Threshold 3” guidance is harder to give. But you start looking for trends. Carthage is a naval power that is rich (from trade) that relies on a largely mercenary army. You’ll come across that, note it down, note the disastrous “Mercenary War” of Carthage, and move on.
Then, maybe you’re studying the American Revolution, and you realize that the British Empire (also a rich naval trading empire) relied on mercenary soldiers, and maybe you note that Washington ambushed foreign mercenaries—Hessians—at Trenton after he crossed the Delaware. That’s interesting, isn’t it? You note it down and keep moving on.
Over time, you start learning about the defensive ability of maritime powers with great navies, but also their relative vulnerabilities.
Maybe, over time, you start noticing that certain personality types and backgrounds that rise to the height of power often overreach in their lifetimes: note Napoleon’s overreach in Spain and then invading Russia while the Spanish situation was still a problem; note Hideyoshi Toyotomi declaring war on the Ming and Joseon Dynasties with his still-not-consolidated unified Japan; note Adolf Hitler. Similar patterns; minimal consolidation. You file in that in your memory as you notice it.
Eventually you start connecting dots.
What else? If you really like a historical era, sooner or later you’ll want to head over to Wikipedia and start Wiki-walking heavily to familiarize yourself with the names, places, maps, timetables, and everything of the era. “Sengoku” and its many offshoots was one of the big catalysts for me. Eventually you’ll want to start reading less personal histories like Weatherford’s History of Money that traces technologies, cultures, or trends… I’m wary of these types of histories, since they’re far more likely to be seemingly-convincing-but-wrong, but sooner or later you’ll have to get into them. Like, if you read about how the huge force was destroyed by Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae you’ll draw your own conclusions but regardless of what conclusions you draw, you’ll be dealing largely in facts. If you read “The Blundering Battle Syndrome” (I just made that up) you’ll get a hand-picked list that supports the author’s point but probably lacks counterexamples; I want to deal in facts and start identifying trends on my own primarily.
Whew. Long comment. Hope there’s some useful jumping-off points for you there. Let me know if you take up any of the suggestions, and how it goes for you.
I’ve heard that Hideyoshi didn’t seriously intend to conquer the Ming and Joseon, and that those campaigns were intended more as a way of nominally fulfilling land claims he’d made to supporters during his previous conquests: “oh, right, I did promise a fiefdom to you. Well, it’s over there, you just need to conquer it.” If they succeeded, he’d expanded his holdings and fulfilled his obligations; if they failed, they’d be dead or in disgrace.
Not sure I actually believe it, but it’s a clever solution and fits with my model of Hideyoshi’s personality.
(While we’re on the late Sengoku period, Tokugawa Ieyasu stands out as an outstandingly ambitious general that really understood the consolidation thing. The [scary, totalitarian, but stable] dynasty he put in place lasted for 300 years and only cracked once American and British gunships proved that progress outside had caught up with them.)
There’s plenty of good places to start. Far more important than having a sort of “best” book on history would be having one that highly engages you. In that regard, biographies of particular leaders tend to be more engaging, since there’s a protagonist and we can generally understand their story. Ron Chernow is an excellent biographer, and both “Titan” (about John Rockefeller) and “Washington: A Life” are both pretty good starting places, since if you’re American, you already know at least a basic understanding of the major cities of the time, the economy, the laws, etc.
Again, when starting, I think being engaging is key. Eiji Yoshikawa wrote two excellent period accurate historical fictions, “Musashi” about the famous samurai and “Taiko” about the second greater unifier of Japan, Hideyoshi Toyotomi. Both are very engaging and great jumping-off points into Japan’s Sengoku Warring States era.
I generally recommend against broad historical overviews of a time period of large nation as a starting place, because it’s too easy to get lost. One possible exception might be Jan Morris’s “Heaven’s Command” about the British Empire. Morris takes an approach that makes history much more understandable and relatable by telling the story of the British Empire through the lens of individual characters. Morris will, for instance, take a British lieutenant who is being sent to India and follow his journey by steamship in getting to India, the ports he stopped at, discussions of the sights he saw, discussions of the treatment he received for malaria, etc. Morris uses all real figures and reals from letters, newspapers, telegraphs, archived records, war plans, etc. It makes the history really come alive even if you don’t necessarily have the whole regional context. Morris’s followup “Pax Britannica” is also excellent, though you’d want to read Heaven’s Command first. Morris is very pro-British and says so in the introduction to the book, but I think is also very fair about British mishandlings of Ireland, the Sepoy Mutiny, the Kabul Retreat, etc.
I think there’s a lot of value in reading histories written 100 to 200 years ago, because you learn about two eras: the era that is written about, and the recent past. Count Egon Corti’s 1927 “Rise of House Rothschild” is a masterpiece for understanding both the establishment of the international banking system and for (indirectly) understanding Monarchical Europe at its final apex.
Again, the work being engaging and meaningful to you is really important. H.W. Brands’s “The First American” about Benjamin Franklin is excellent but I wouldn’t recommend it; too long and boring. (I’m listening to it on audiobook and it’s 95% complete, yet taking a lot of discipline to finish it; Brands is thorough and rigorous, arguably too rigorous). Getting pleasure out of the book and engaging well with it builds momentum, which is key.
Audiobooks can be great for a couple reasons: first, a compelling narrator can really make a story come alive. Second, if there’s (for instance) some confusing troop movements between cities that have since been renamed, if it’s written it’ll throw you off (at least, that throws me off), but if it’s audio, you’ll just keep moving. Early on when studying history, names and places you don’t recognize come at you frequently—in my experience, the work to dig into relatively minor characters early on isn’t worth it. Like, when learning about the end of the Roman Republic and its transition to Roman Empire, the names Marius, Sulla, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, Mithradates, and a whole lot more come up—but on your first goings-through, I’d say don’t dig too deeply. Eventually you’ll want to follow up with all of these characters and understand them, but it’s nearly impossible to fully get one’s mind simultaneously around Caesar/Pompey/Crassus/Cicero (and all the other supporting characters) and likewise Marius/Sulla and their supporting characters, and the intervening years after Sulla’s dictatorship and before the next wave of civil wars and threats.
So—audio can help. On that score, the narrator is key—I’ll often choose audiobooks based on narrator instead of author. Adequate-writing-great-narration tends to be more engaging than great-writing-adequate-narration. I really, really like Charlton Griffin as a narrator; “Charlemagne: From the Hammer to the Cross” is nearly mesmerizing at times and is almost perfectly produced. His audio version of Julius Caesar’s autobiographical Commentaries about the Gallic Wars is also terrific.
Whilst on the audio kick, the “Hardcore History” podcast by Dan Carlin is exceptional. “Death Throes of the Roman Republic” would be a terrific series to start with from that podcast. “Ghosts of the Ostfront” is horrific and will likely put you in a bad mood for a few weeks (so be careful), but it was the first time I fully started to grasp the savagery and desperation of the Eastern Front in World War II.
What else? Autobiographies are usually worthwhile, as are technical books or histories, especially ones written by leading figures. Machiavelli’s “The Prince” should be read sooner or later. If you wind up deciding to read about the early German Empire, “Moltke on War” translates and curates orders, military texts, and doctrine documents from Helmuth von Moltke, who is perhaps the single most underrated military figure in history. (He was the Chief of the military when Bismarck was Chancellor; Bismarck, being a genius at multiple disciplines and immensely quotable, gets more attention from as a symbolic figure of the era, but in terms of adjusting disciplines to emerging technology—telegraphs, railroads, troop movements, reporting structures, resources, munitions, setting hierarchies of objectives, etc—Moltke is one of the greatest at this, and he’s probably the best general ever to dictate and write the sheer volume of writings for the military academy and instructions for his officers).
To get to “threshold 2” insight, fall in love with a particular region’s history, and follow it forwards and backwards multiple generations, and examine individual lives of important figures from multiple perspectives. Read about Julius Caesar from multiple perspectives, read about Pompey, read about Crassus, etc. Go east a bit and read about Mithradates the Great (“The Poison King” is a good book on him). Read about Cleopatra and Anthony. Go back in time and read about Hannibal, Fabius, and Scipio. (“Scipio Africanus” by BH Liddel-Hart is really, really good; an amazing short work). Start connecting the dots. Read Cicero and Caesar’s works.
“Threshold 3” guidance is harder to give. But you start looking for trends. Carthage is a naval power that is rich (from trade) that relies on a largely mercenary army. You’ll come across that, note it down, note the disastrous “Mercenary War” of Carthage, and move on.
Then, maybe you’re studying the American Revolution, and you realize that the British Empire (also a rich naval trading empire) relied on mercenary soldiers, and maybe you note that Washington ambushed foreign mercenaries—Hessians—at Trenton after he crossed the Delaware. That’s interesting, isn’t it? You note it down and keep moving on.
Over time, you start learning about the defensive ability of maritime powers with great navies, but also their relative vulnerabilities.
Maybe, over time, you start noticing that certain personality types and backgrounds that rise to the height of power often overreach in their lifetimes: note Napoleon’s overreach in Spain and then invading Russia while the Spanish situation was still a problem; note Hideyoshi Toyotomi declaring war on the Ming and Joseon Dynasties with his still-not-consolidated unified Japan; note Adolf Hitler. Similar patterns; minimal consolidation. You file in that in your memory as you notice it.
Eventually you start connecting dots.
What else? If you really like a historical era, sooner or later you’ll want to head over to Wikipedia and start Wiki-walking heavily to familiarize yourself with the names, places, maps, timetables, and everything of the era. “Sengoku” and its many offshoots was one of the big catalysts for me. Eventually you’ll want to start reading less personal histories like Weatherford’s History of Money that traces technologies, cultures, or trends… I’m wary of these types of histories, since they’re far more likely to be seemingly-convincing-but-wrong, but sooner or later you’ll have to get into them. Like, if you read about how the huge force was destroyed by Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae you’ll draw your own conclusions but regardless of what conclusions you draw, you’ll be dealing largely in facts. If you read “The Blundering Battle Syndrome” (I just made that up) you’ll get a hand-picked list that supports the author’s point but probably lacks counterexamples; I want to deal in facts and start identifying trends on my own primarily.
Whew. Long comment. Hope there’s some useful jumping-off points for you there. Let me know if you take up any of the suggestions, and how it goes for you.
I notice a lack of primary sources on those examples.
I’ve heard that Hideyoshi didn’t seriously intend to conquer the Ming and Joseon, and that those campaigns were intended more as a way of nominally fulfilling land claims he’d made to supporters during his previous conquests: “oh, right, I did promise a fiefdom to you. Well, it’s over there, you just need to conquer it.” If they succeeded, he’d expanded his holdings and fulfilled his obligations; if they failed, they’d be dead or in disgrace.
Not sure I actually believe it, but it’s a clever solution and fits with my model of Hideyoshi’s personality.
(While we’re on the late Sengoku period, Tokugawa Ieyasu stands out as an outstandingly ambitious general that really understood the consolidation thing. The [scary, totalitarian, but stable] dynasty he put in place lasted for 300 years and only cracked once American and British gunships proved that progress outside had caught up with them.)
Wow. Thank you. I’ll put some of these on my docket and see where they take me.
I think the point about finding engaging texts being more important than finding the “best” texts is generalizable beyond history.