Some time ago, I read The Rest is History by Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, two historians who have a podcast titled..."The Rest is History." There is a mild annoyance: since technically both books are the product of their podcast, the authorship shown on the book spine of the first one is "Goalhanger Podcasts" and the second is Holland and Sandbrook. So if you're sorting your books by author...the first one looks in the wrong place with all the Tom Holland books.
Just recently, I finished the next book in what I hope will be an ever-expanding collection: The Rest is History Returns.
(here's what the two books look like on Amazon.com)
Now, what's to enjoy with either of these books?
First, bite-sized history. Yes, to learn all the ins-and-outs of history, you need long books. These long books need footnotes and references, places to turn for further study, and so forth. However, as you are getting started, or if you are wanting to survey a wide variety of subjects, the quick, bite-sized amounts of history you get in either of these books is just right. Are there missing details? There are. Guess what? There are missing details in Ron Chernow's 1000+ page biography of Alexander Hamilton.
These are good amounts to get you interested.
Second, humour. Don't get me wrong: some matters in history are very, very serious. There will be matters about which joking is just, plainly, wrong. (That line has some flexibility: at one point, the Muppets made a joke about the Titanic, but then shortly after the movie came out, a humor newsletter reprinted that same joke and many people were furious about the insensitivity of it. However, certain subjects are never funny; some subjects should only be areas of humor for those affected by it. I shouldn't joke about Jews, but if Mel Brooks makes a joke about Jews, it's hilarious.) Back on track: a lot of history has funny moments, whether they are silly ironies or just things that we find funny in hindsight.
There are also hilarious ways to present history, such as presenting one of the Spanish Conquistadors and his personal history by way of imagining his confession to a priest. Imagining the Marquis de Sade going through psychoanalysis is also...quirky.
Third, accuracy. These days, we are very used to two forms of bad story telling: one is "rush to be first" rather than "rush to be correct" news reporting, where "some sources say other news agencies are reporting" is considered accurate, even when the initial point is two anonymous goobers with a Twitter account. News keeps sliding into the background behind entertainment and marketing, so we get used to "maybe it's accurate, maybe it's not." The other is "inspired by a true story" TV and movies.
Go listen to the "Historians at the Movies" podcast or watch one of several YouTube clips where historians evaluate historical movies and see how those turn out. We can't seem to even get simple biographies come through with accuracy these days. Holand and Sandbrook, however, admit when the evidence is thin (there's a section on the JFK Assassination where they rate the evidence of various theories) and when the actual evidence is pretty solid. It's nice to have that be the apparent effort.
It's a great read. Good for evenings, if you aren't too scared of the French. They tend to show up and cause trouble. It's on the shelf under "G."
(Also worth checking out their podcast, but I haven't found a good point in my day to listen every day. I do want to.)
