When You Just Want to Find a Nonfiction Book to Read, but Apparently They're All Bad
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2024
- Just a disclaimer that while I'm sure some of these books have redeeming qualities, this video is just meant to reflect the way I've seen historians online reacting to them. Haven't read them all myself and I'm not a historian, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
(Except when it comes to The Man-Date of Heaven, of course. That book is perfect.)
Music:
Comic Plodding Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
creativecommons...
Uh, awkward, but Ottoman Ottomans was actually largely plagiarized from "A Little Sit: Turkish Furniture In The Age Of Not Standing," so you might want to revise that rec.
Phil Edwards on Generic Entertainment? What is this, a crossover episode? (Love both your work, you two are legends ❤)
unfortunately, I cannot tell if this is a joke or not
Hope you're not one of those poseurs who skipped over the previous volume in the series, "Fancy a Shag: Carpet Conflicts among the Istanbul Textile District in the 16th century." Really covers the ground one needs to understand the ongoing weave of events.
@@etexpatriate See, I get what you're saying, but I think FAS is hugely indebted to "Looming Crisis: The Role of Looms In Medieval Turkish Floor Coverings."
It is a joke as so far as I don't truly think it's a crossover episode, quoting Bojack Horseman to be tongue-in-cheek. It's not a joke when I say I love both their work.@@insourcing2157
MAIZE runner wrecked me
Popcornphobia precursor, eh? Gotta love these books on mayan food evolution.
In pre-Columbian times, maize games were extremely popular
lol didn’t expect to see you here love your game btw
@@Cataphract_ ahh thank you! And this is one of my favorite channels 😆
Yeah, I've had a similar crisis. My conclusion is everyone is wrong all the time but most are not popular enough to be noticed.
Yeah. I hope you realize this also means that whatever the tv in the present moment tries to tell you is most likely wrong as well. Including "respectable" news outlets.
@@lightworker2956Okay.
@@lightworker2956so then how do you educate yourself on important matters? Please, do enlighten us (metaphorically).
Yep. I came to that conclusion when I started reading seriously. Everyone is against everyone in the academic world and so there is always a problem with everything. So really, pretty much anything goes so long as it doesn't go against objective evidence.
@@eeyorehaferbock7870You can't, because there's no way of telling who's telling the truth.
Instead, you just have to trust in your religion and not get too conspiratorial. If you don't know what is happening, it won't affect you.
As a person who wants to learn about history but doesn't want to be bored to tears by dry text books the struggle is real
Honestly, the best you can really do is something like The Great Courses series where university professors walk you through a subject. They've done the heavy sifting already and are able to present complex things in a digestible, enjoyable, and accurate way.
Many universities have a publicly available reading list for their courses, just pick a subject you're interested in and read that class's bibliography (beware when it's the teacher's own work though, even the best teachers have a tendency to put their own work right at the top of their reading list).
i recommend you blackwell history series
I've started Barbara Tuchman and dan Jones and love both!
I'd recommend Horrible Histories.
You can't just say there's a sweet spot between the two extremes without actually mentioning any, so far I've been convinced there are really only the two extremes
The r/askhistorians megathread is a pretty good starting place afaik
It really depends on the field. I'd recommend looking at books published by University presses, written by professors with positions/degrees in the relevant subject matter, or books recommended by academic forums like r/AskHistorians.
Going to a library
First or second hand accounts from the time period you're studying. They aren't any more true than pop history, but at least they tell you what people at the time were actually saying. And breaking the language barrier is free except for your time!
I think the theme of the skit fits. Books that start with a preconceived thesis and cherry picks events to fit tend to age poorly, while a more specific book whose main goal to communicate about a specific event does better.
Guns germs and steel, the better angels of our nature, both squash massive amounts of history into a single narrative. And they both kind of aim to placate modern anxieties (colonialism isn't all our fault, just circumstance! We don't have to stress so much about world peace, were actually already better without Even trying). Compare it to something like the immortal life of Henrietta Lacks. A specific story, covering one topic, that has been out for over a decade and ageing well.
The sweet spot, in my opinion:
1. "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity", David Graeber, David Wengrow
2. "Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East", Amanda H. Podany
3. Anything by Mary Beard and Peter Heather about the ancient Rome
4. "The Perdiccas Years, 323 320 BC: Alexander's Successors at War", Hughes Tristan
5. "1491", "1493" by Charles C. Mann
...
and really, many others. It's not that bad.
6. "City of Quartz", Mike Davis
William Dalrymple’s Anarchy as well, about 18th century India. As for Graeber, Dawn of Everything had some really interesting bits but suffered from him trying to inject his political views into the book; which is especially awkward considering his poor understanding of economics.
@@CatastrophicDiseaseI'd be interested to see a critique of Graeber's understanding of economics, as there are many valid critiques to be made of him elsewhere, but I feel like most of the people saying he "doesn't understand economics" take neoclassical economic precepts as proven truths of reality rather than ideological assertions in their own right (akin to how Marxists talk about dialectics), and as a consequence I can't really take them terribly seriously.
Oh number 2 on your list, Weavers, Scribes, and Kings looks interesting. I will have to take a look.
@@ConvincingPeople Believe me, I’m no neoclassicist. His lack of understanding shows in the way he holds up certain past societies as models for our own world - he denigrates the entire concept of economic development (which, by the way, has lifted over a billion people out of poverty in the postwar period), and instead proposes utopian leftist visions of a society based on pre-contact Wendats. He fundamentally misses the importance of things like global supply chains, which are vital to providing any semblance of a good quality of life (medicines, cheap clothing and food, etc.); after all, I doubt Graeber would be so quick to tout the infant mortality rate of peoples like the Wendat or native Californians whose social system he seems to lionize.
Ah as an actual history teacher this makes me lol, i can totally see myself here although not exactly to that extent
So the reason to learn history is to own the noobs
I recommend blood meridian
@@TuckerMasterson-pl4ol what devilish trick are you trying to do here I've seen your other comments
@@newmobils8294 the judge is a great favorite
As an anthropologist and historian... i knew you would bring up gg&s/jared diamond, and yet i still had the exact reaction shown in the video 🤣
Me too. God I made such a noise.
Name a better book as an introduction to the topic. Please. 🙏
@@MarshallTheArtist 1491 by Charles C Mann and the follow up 1493 by the same author.
Now it's also Yuval Harari. Few of my journalist (sigh) friends read his books and couldn't stop talking about them.
@@St.Basil. I've got a book of his waiting to be read, but I've been thorn between these sensationalist reviews praising him and other people telling me the books are actually kinda problematic, never getting into much detail tho. So, how is it really?
I once made the mistake of reading a Jared Diamond book at an undergraduate History Honor's Society conference and got ambushed by ALL the historians. One of the most embarrassing days of my life.
69th like :D
please say more!
I had a class where my teacher actually taught a Diamond book ("Collapse")
Same, read his book for my ap world history class so I thought it was legit until I mentioned something from it and was verbally assaulted
@@FelipeKana1 , It's been a while, but the gist of it is that Diamond is overly reductionist and fails to understand the World System approach to understanding the interconnectedness of various peoples. His work on Haiti in particular ignored the role of racism and imperialism by the US and France in particular. By ignoring the politics and trying to offer an rationale that narrowly focused on cherrypicked examples, he offered a narrative that led people astray in their interpretations of history.
At the time, I did not think too much of it, as I had other things going on, but given his premise of the primary factors causing collapse being "deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems (erosion, salinization, fertility losses), water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, introduced species, human population growth, and increased per capita human impact" his work lends itself to the over population thesis. Organizations such as the Population Council employed these narratives to sterilize much of the developing world in an attempt to stave off collapse in the Diamond meaning of the word. I personally do not believe nowadays that Diamond is malicious, but his narrative does exist in a constellation of works that miss the broader problems that contribute to collapse, and excuse self-serving organizations and political office holders. While not a critique on Diamond, a good write-up on the broader paradigm that he is part of, see this work by Ramsden (2001) on the problems that arose from the neo-eugenics movement of the Population Council: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/rockarch.issuelab.org/resources/27777/27777.pdf
And this NYT piece on some of the empowered medical doctors that used their own discretion to "solve" over population in the U.S. What happened to Puerto Rico in particular is disgusting.
@@rohangondor6250 , not surprised about that; almost all of my college friends read this in HS as well. For what its worth, the book is very readable as far as history goes. A lot of historians are way too poetic and purposefully write to be opaque, with their content behind paywalls. So yeah, Generic Entertainment speaks the truth.
Start with the popular stuff, you'll be wrong about everything, but you'll have the categories and vocabulary to find out more.
Pretty much what I did. Started with what were basically picture books about WWII when I was a little kid and now I’m blowing hundred of dollars looking for obscure and out of print history books.
@@senorsombrero1275 The documentary Europa The Last Battle is essential if you're interested in WWII history
Blood meridian is historically accurate
In high school, we were forced to learn about "Guns, Germs, and Steel", and were penalized whenever we tried to talk about other factors outside of the book's limited view. I have the same reaction to the book lmao
yeah excuses, lies and cope is also just a dry read
One of my History teachers in HS regurgitated GG and S. I thought it made sense at the time. Real history books are hard to read without knowledge of context.
America is an occupied state
GG&S doesn't sound that bad. The idea that Europeans substantially benefitted in their conquest of the new world from immunity acquired by living with livestock seems more plausible than some alternatives.
@@eldrago19 That and the fact that cities where worse and more prevalent in the old world. Being around diseases will make you better equipped for them.
find a book with a fairly broad, general title ("the wars of the roses", a king or politician's name, "women in medieval europe") where the author's other books are in-depth studies of one week in the history of medieval france or the religious role of a specific embroidery stitch done by left-handed basque women.
Blood meridian
excellent advice.
The epic of gilgamesh is the only book worth reading
Blood meridian
Based
*mahabharata
"The broader you go the more inaccuries you'll find" wise words to live by.
The thing is, starting with somewhat inaccurate broad generalizations and gradually honing that down is also how we learn hard sciences. We tell all new students that silver ONLY forms a positive ion with +1 charge and various other rules. Then you get to the next level up and learn those generalizations aren't as universal as you were taught.
As long as you go into that eyes open and know the biases of the source, even the more eyerolling general pop books are a good start for most people. Just know not to believe everything you read, same as on the internet.
Damn, the Man Date of Heaven isn't a real book, how unfortunate
I would actually like to read that...
Sounds like the title of a Xiran Jay Zhao video.
I was also disappointed to not find it in my google search
@@s1nd3rr0z3 Pretty sure it's a riff on Gary Leupp's Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan, which does exist and is quite intriguing if you have any interest in the subject of the social construction of gender, sexuality and deviance, or for that matter the thorny parts of queer history in general.
when people mention Sapiens
Sapiens was good
I am not a historian, but a biologist. I know my evolution concepts, and Sapiens made a lot of gross mistakes in that area. So after that, when I was reading about a subject I didn't know that much, like anthropology and history, I was strongly suspecting similar mistakes were being made.
I enjoyed the book, but refused to lean too much into any broad generalization or ground breaking conclusion it came to.
@@JJMB27 I’m with you on that. I know a lot more about history than biology and I liked Sapiens but it’s not revolutionary or groundbreaking
@@JJMB27 Oh no, I have Sapiens assigned at a culture class and I was thinking it explained evolution pretty good. Can you tell me (if you remember) where it was biologically mystaken overall? Like genuinely asking
Beat me to it. When the tone of the author is a self congratulatory "I figured out our entire species from my armchair, " I be like, get concrete on any part of your narrative and you'll find baseless assumptions, gross inaccuracies, unmentioned counter examples, etc.
Trying to find an "accurate" history book is pointless. Instead, read multiple viewpoints on the same topic from different authors. This applies to virtually any subject
This. So much this. I learned about the history of Islam by reading a history written by an Islamic apologist from an Iranian family who fled to America, then a more secular history written by a mixed American-Afghani guy who was raised in Afghanistan. Very different perspectives, overall a much more well-rounded experience.
It is far better to learn more about the philosophy of history so you get better at identifying propaganda, false narratives, biases, orientalism and such
@@tmd_95 Could you give the titles? Sound interesting based on the authors alone.
@@Gallic_Gabagool Sure! The first one is No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, by Reza Aslan. The second is Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary.
I'd recommend reading Aslan first, then Ansary. If you read Ansary first, you'll approach Aslan with a more skeptical eye and it'll be harder for you to see the story from his point of view. Or at least I know I would have haha. I'm glad I read them in the order I did.
Exactly. Then you can come up with your own inaccurate history.
me being completely obsessed with the If Books Could Kill podcast
The One Book Theory at play
what is it about?
@@drendelousit's basically two guys going over really well known books and debunking them, in my opinion it's one of the best podcasts out there. They manage to make it pretty funny in addition to doing a ton of research for every book. Worth checking out, especially if you read popular nonfiction in general.
Wow that sounds like something I NEED to check out
@@drendelousto add to @WelfareChrist’s point, Michael Hobbes, who’s one of the cohosts, is also the former cohost of the podcast You’re Wrong About (blank). The dude knows how to make a compelling story out of some very dry topics.
I remember having to read Collapse by Jared Diamond. I'm not even a historian nor anthropologist, but there was so much in the book that reeked of bullshit to me, starting with the way he continually stretches the definition of collapse far past its breaking point.
I didn't realize he published more than that.
Why did I know this video would start with Guns, Germs and Steel?
Because it's in the thumbnail
@@evanthesquirrel Unironically hadn't noticed that.
Because historians are largely petty and pedantic.
It's making me lose interest in the subject, at least insofar as what any of them having to say.
@@kiethhammer6882 I will bite. Please provide examples
@@comradeofthebalance3147 why do you need examples? Are you trying to start an internet debate that will largely be unproductive and a complete waste of time
Bart Ehrman often mentions how writing for a popular audience is looked down on as a lesser pursuit by academics or even a money grab
I come from a STEM background and there, if it’s not in a peer reviewed journal or maybe a textbook, nobody cares
Part of it is the lack of peer review (all it takes to publish a book is money), part of it is looking down from the ivory tower, but part of it is also that it’s hard to speak clearly from atop that tower and the only qualification needed to be a professor is a PhD, no teaching qualifications needed
Knowing what assumptions to make about your students without talking down to them and knowing which nuances can be left for later are tough skills to master
Maybe we need more journalists publishing popular works on various fields?
Spot on. Part of the problem seems to be that academic historians seem allergic to writing about the big picture instead of hyper-specific niches (yes, of course there are some exceptions, but not enough). And so there's a void that is being filled by less qualified people.
When I engage with history as a layperson, I'm largely interested in understanding the most important political, economics, and social tends and events in a particular time and place. But the incentives of academia push academic historians to do the exact opposite: publish a large volume of papers and books in topics so obscure that it's relatively easy to make a novel contribution. Publishing a well-written, big picture history of a particular time and place for the general public doesn't help you get tenure.
It's just how we work. As a historian your job is not to write history but to find out new things about history. And you'll find out most things by looking into the details. Those details add up to change the collective knowledge in the scientific community and after 25 years the big picture about: f.E. the age of Charlemagne is completely changed.
And then someone can write a big book on that subject. But that happens only every 20-30 years. In general that's not what you get payed for.
My solution for this is: Listening to Lectures from professional historians as podcast. It's often the best of both worlds.
@@DerMannDerSeineMutterwar and also because writing a non-8 million page book about a broad subject means you're guaranteed to be reductive and not detailed enough when explaining the things you are writing about. No historian wants to do that, especially if it's a subject they specialize in and, thus, know they would need to go into far more detail to explain a certain thing, and don't want to be forcefully broad about it.
@@danielfelix3927 though tbf the two books brought up in that are books that make grand sweeping statements about how the world works that are super reductive and pure ideology. It's not just about being broad, they wanna make a great sweeping point about history and cherrypick examples to fit their narrative.
@@DerMannDerSeineMutterwarooh what are those podcasts??
@@foofaz5182 Honestly, most of them are in German. Since education is not a commodity in Germany, there are multiple universities who just release videos from their lectures. Which is not helpful for an english audience I know.
"The Great Courses" is nice as far as I can tell. I heard multiple good lectures in them. But it´s not as cheap as standart podcasts. On quick research I found this youtobe channel which seems nice. But I can´t confirm it since didn´t heard through any of them.
www.youtube.com/@YaleCourses/playlists
Great editing on this one. I kept forgetting there aren't actually three of you
I started watching your videos with “How Wheel of Time Fans…” and all this time later it’s safe to say you are still one of my favorite UA-camrs. There’s so much range in your content, and yet you’ve managed to make it all feel as accessible and homey as classic UA-cam. Thanks, Nathaniel. Really 😊I so enjoy following you. It’s not everyday a UA-camr makes me consider getting an X!
Thanks so much for your kind words! Sometimes I do worry my content is a little too diverse, so it genuinely makes me happy to hear that you still find it all accessible and enjoyable.
The worst vice is advice, but for folks in the comments struggling to find things to read, here are some suggestions:
1.) If you want to read for current understanding on a subject, try to stick to work published in the past 10 years or so. (You can probably go up to 20 or so years or so if the field is particularly obscure.) That said, there is plenty of wiggle room from field to field.
2.) If you are looking at works older than that, their historiographic value in their particular field or quality of writing are more valuable than their content. Understanding moves at such a fast pace that many works can easily be out of date even by the time they hit the shelves, much less as science marches on in the decades after publishing. One of the best things I read on this (an article that eludes me at the moment) described reading older science books more like literature; I would apply that broadly to most nonfiction, where the aspects one normally thinks about when analyzing literature -- influence in the genre, quality of writing, the work's historical context, etc. -- come to the fore analyzing older nonfiction. I think of Richard Dawkins's "The Selfish Gene" (1976) & "The Extended Phenotype" (1982): understanding of evolutionary biology has changed substantially in the past 40 or so years -- and Richard Dawkins has had some...political positions in the meantime -- but the interest comes from how influential they have been to the field, how later authors have responded to them, and that they are written quite well. For an example in history, Edward Gibbon's "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (1751) is 273 years out of date with the scholarship, but the quality of its writing, cultural influence, & place in history can be appreciated by the modern reader.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Gibbon's accounts were still held in high historical regard due to his remarkably good use of primary sources and his very ahead of time historiography.
@@danielfelix3927"Ahead of his time" is the key term here. He was still in the 18th century.
@@danielfelix3927from what I can tell, flip flopping between gibbon and some more recent history books that cover the same period there is a lot of accurate information in the decline and fall but somethings are off and the central premise that Christianity caused the decline of Rome is more his opinion than an actual fact. I haven't got into the Byzantine empire part of the book yet (I've only just gotten past Julian) and I often hear he really misrepresented them more so than anything else though, which makes sense given his dislike of Christianity.
Academia is a joke right now. You’re better off absorbing classics right alongside current studies imo. Details can be wrong but the fundamental ideas are just as poignant. This is less applicable to hard sciences but even in culture studies there are wayyyy better books written 50 + years ago. Plenty of books hold up extremely well.
In the field of history, id reckon you might be good for text written in the past 20 years. Africanists regularly use sources from the 1970s and onwards, though there is also just less literature published for that continent. Pre 1970s though, there's a sharp increase in iffyness.
Really surprised Sapiens wasn't mentioned
is it that bad? haven't read it but it kinda interested me
I got through Chapter 8 before I had to return it to the library. I couldn't take much more anyway. It was horrifying. I lost track of how many times I read some version of the idea that human rights are just a fiction. That man would have no problem with the deaths of millions.
@@Yesica1993you know... that he's ugh... right though? like... human rights were invented... and didn't exist for most of human history, even in concept?
@@juliempankinn Another one who'd have no problem with the deaths of millions.
Humans are created in God's image. THAT is why they are valuable. THAT is why we are not supposed to murder them or cannibalize them or rape them, etc.
@@Yesica1993 nah man, i am not ok with deaths of millions. your god sure was when he killed everyone except one man's family with a flood though
To be honest this is why I went down a rabbit hole of reading David Graeber where he was an anthropologist who decided to actually write some easier to read books. Like they're still thick books but like Debt and The New History of Humanity are the only things I can think of even close and also on niche topics
JSTOR saves us once again
I like John Keegan's books on warfare because he heavily focuses on the weird underlying monoculture as well as the interesting quirks that lie under the surface in military culture. Like legitimately fascinating analysis on the mindset of the fighting man and why it's so different.
John Keegan is excellent.
Honestly this is so true,some pop history books are so wrong it’s hilarious
probably because the more people will read them, the more mistakes will be found
@@legonlavia the small mistakes are not the issue, but it’s usually the entire main narrative that doesn’t hold up (like with the books the mentioned)
@@legonlaviathe issue with most pop history book is they often present themselves as having some kind of groundbreaking conclusion that (while sometimes not entirely without merit) requires them to make a lot of stretches to make an argument. Usually they’re written by journalists too (not to say journalists can’t write good history just a lot of them write terrible history).
Was Jared Diamond's hypothesis that "Horizontal continents are more likely to discover large scale agriculture" wrong?
@@dattasid123It's a claim that's absolutely up for debate. Which angle do you want to tackle first, continents themselves, or how horizontal they are?
Lol as a history graduate this is very accurate
Do you have any recommendations for pop history or at least history books that encompass a broader range of dates?
Even if a good history book seems “too specific,” it will probably give a good broad picture of its historical context as well if it is well-written. For example, I read a book on the history of the Black National Anthem that used its relatively narrow focus to give an insightful and informative history of segregation in the US. It’s called “May We Forever Stand” by Imani Perry. It is also written in an accessible style!
Don’t discount a history book just because it seems too specific!!
This is something I have always wondered, Guns germs and steel is basically “geography dictates culture” and seeks to ask why some groups of people excelled in technology at a rapid rate compared to others. If its is not geography than what is the answer? Were these groups just smarter and had cultures more suited to technological advancement?
@@thecannonball34That's like saying the best baseball team is the one with the most luck. Completely useless. The British didn't subjegate half the world through luck, they did it because of a combination of several factors that enabled them to do so, geography being one of them.
I was on a similar book quest recently and came to the conclusion my real issue isn't so much the lack of accuracy but that we're not differentiating these types of books as entertainment. It isn't made to inform, but to engage the average person and get sales. It's the same thing with historical films and so on, they aren't meant to be accurate they are meant to entertain and make money, so nitpicking the inaccuracies is besides the point; the point is, what does it say about our culture? A lot of people don't want to read dense and/or complex books, which I totally understand. But a lot of people think this source of information is legitimate when it's not, which is where it causes problems because people take it at face value.
A part of the problem is how unapproachable academia is. They actually take pride in being obscure to the masses, stating fallacies about needing to sacrifice accuracy for readability (which is in part true, but then you read enough to see how scholars are usually terrible writers.)
i think its because trust is built in. We are extremely social creatures, to the point we get depressed and die younger if we're not social enough. Any complex social situation demands basic trust between parties, and anyone automatically too skeptical would struggle to survive due to the isolation that creates.
So people so the 'I know history let me talk about it' guy make a book or movie and the instinct is to trust it, because they aren't assuming it's a lie made for money (because besides a few conmen traditional survival without trust and acting trust worthy is really really hard)
“I’m looking for broader, sweeping things”
Spengler has entered the chat
Do you like his work or like to criticize it?
@@jameswilkerson4412 I like it. Even if he gets a few things wrong, he has a lot of the right ideas
Meanwhile I read all my nonfiction from project Gutenberg
MA Museum Studies graduate here. I avoided the mosh pit that is archeology in museums completely in getting my masters. You see, I graduated with my bachelors in the Earth Sciences, so I simply did my research on geological and paleontological collections in UK museums. Yes, these are still very much problematic. Just pick up a book about Cope and Marsh, or dinosaur hunting in the US in general. Unlike the UK, where fossil hunting was either haphazard by aristocrats, or workers accidentally finding fossils during construction, in the US paleontology was heavily tied to infrastructure.....so immigrants. And we all know how well they were treated. There is really nothing in museums that is problem free. But if you want to get through your masters without heavy books thrown at you, geology is probably the way to go.
I love History, and I enjoyed my time in academia, but this touches on a real issue about asking for recommendations when it can sometimes to be hard to even know what you're asking for. Starting broad and then narrowing down is such a solid way of doing it, but jumping on Reddit or any other forum and asking for anything even resembling hand holding can get you a lot of heat.
becoming a historian was my childhood dream, so i've read few history books in my pre-teens. abundance of fundamental differences in books that described the same events totally destroyed that dream. it is disturbing that nonfiction books give more inside about writers characters and biases when compared to fiction.
History reflects the present, not the past. To that effect, it is always shifting.
Um no? Some things happened in the past and some things didn't. Perhaps you meant, the way we tell history is always shifting to reflect our present.
@@mikeymullins5305 History is a field of study, not the object of that study (which is the past). What distinguishes history from other fields of study is the remoteness of that object, that it can never be directly viewed. Also, there is the complex nature of time itself, and the human tendency toward reductivism. But yeah, some things happened and some didn’t. At least, it appears that way.
History can only tell you what we know so far because of what has been found and how we understand and interpret it. Of how the professor or author understands it. It can be okay if you take it with a grain of salt and use several sources on the topic.
Historiography reflects the times of when history is written. That’s not the same as history reflecting the present.
I think it's vice versa. Our past is unchanged while our perception of it is always changing.
“History is, often as not our present politics projected onto the past”
-Robert C Davis
Damn I was actually about to start guns germs and steel...
It's good - professional opposition is typically based on critical theory moralizing about colonialism rather than fact
@JamesTheuer-fr1fy So people shouldn’t be critical?
It’s not my favorite but if it gets people into history then that’s fine- just don’t think of it as giving you a complete understanding of history and realize there are certain generalizations and important factors being being left out. Honestly, that’s what you should do with any history book.
He's exaggerating how bad it is for comedic affect, it's a rather simplistic view of colonization (but any pop intro history book will be) and as the video mentions, it does present history from the perspective of a geological determinist which is something that most (but not all) historians reject
If you're just looking into an introduction of the colonization of the Americas and are willing to accept that the author has some biases (but so does every writer ever) it's not bad
I would actually strongly recommend reading it, and it seems to me that many of the arguments presented against Diamond's idea of geographic determinism completely miss the point the point he is trying to make.
I think the thing you realize when you finally get to do a PhD, as opposed to undergraduate/masters, is that there just aren't that many solid facts out there. I did my doctorate at the intersection of psychology/neuroscience, and a lot of what I did disagreed with most of the other academics out there at the time. It's a really weird mental state to be in for any extended period of time where you are constantly questioning everything.
The best popular books are written by academics who are serious about the ambiguity of what they are writing about. People with grand theories (e.g., Pinker, Diamond, Koch) should be avoided.
The struggle is real.
The only two pop history books I can think of that are decent are 1491 and SPQR.
I don't know man, I get that not every book is entirely accurate and simplifications and generalizations are made, but I kinda think the people who think these books are garbage are at best strongly overreacting, and at worst dislike these books because they don't like the ideas in them (rather than the facts being wrong).
Sensible comment. I'm struck by how many prodigies this generation has produced with the ability to discern BS from books before having demonstrably learned from any.
It's almost as though training students to invalidate piles of material by implying buzz words from their theses is what passes for education now.
One of my favorite history books that I've read was about the history of the highway NC-10 in North Carolina. The history of the Outer Banks is very fascinating
Some non-fiction recommendations:
Oliver Sacks: "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat"
Adam Kay: "This Is Going to Hurt"
Robert Sapolsky: "Behave"
Daniel Kahneman: Thinking Fast and Slow"
Are these supposed to be recommendations or warnings?
@@spacebear1483 Read and find out
Warnings
@@drpg7924 interesting. I recently picked up the Oliver Sacks book. Is there anything wrong with it?
I read Oliver Sacks - "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" and I liked it. It's not history and also not a medical book. It reads like a doctors subjectiv anecdotal diary where he writes with lots of compassion about various patients and their peculiar conditions.
It's not a book to study psychiatry but to contemplate in wonder what can happen with the human mind and to raise compassion. At least it did that for me.
tried to look up the joke recommendations and was very disappointed. i would 100% read those!
If they weren’t too dry, or made up, they might be good reads! The topics seem interesting anyways
The Man Date of Heaven is just begging to be written…
I think it’s okay to go into controversial books knowing they may not provide some wholly accurate perfect rendition of history. I still believe they provide a lense to understand how the world works using this specific point of view, but knowing the lense has flaws. In the case of Guns Germs and Steel, I’d say read the book knowing it’s not perfect but just to understand. If you find yourself agreeing with Diamond it’s fine. After finishing it, completely tear your understanding apart as to why the material is not good. And differentiate what you believe to be good and bad. This way we can become critical on our own beliefs yet further our curiosity.
Dammmmmm good video. I am seeing myself through this crisis of finding a good non-fiction book. Guess there are no better option 😢
Keep up the good work
If anybody knows of any good pop-history books which are fairly accurate please let me know!
me too!!
I recently read 1177 b.c. : the year civilization collapsed by Eric cline. AFAIK Eric Cline is a respected historian.
I said it in another comment but Black Jacobins by CLR James and In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larsen.
Erik Foner has an abridged version on Reconstruction which is good too
A Fourth Option: The History of Human Pattern Recognition by Erich Fourth is also quite good
Left us high and dry with that “sweet-spot” between those extremes 😢
There's lots of great options, and I'm planning to do a video or two on good history books at some point! This video is just a manifestation of my initial frustration with trying to get into the genre, but I've slowly been getting more well-read since then, so soon I should be able to recommend some stuff.
@@genericallyentertaining we’ll be waiting!
This feels targeted at most of the IF BOOKS COULD KILL podcast demo... 😅
Hahaha, nice. I learned once I left university I could almost never find any scholarly books and those that I could find were way above my budget and on obscure things. It gets harder and harder to find good titles over time and I'm stuck reading old stuff.
Wow so you're telling me that the seat of imperial power tends to popularize and consume books that valorize itself and disregard accuracy and other viewpoints? D'oh!
🎯
Imperialist propaganda is one hell of a drug. Most addicts to it don't even realize they've been hooked on it all their lives. They can't even recognize their ideological drug of choice, to them it's just "common sense"
To be fair, broad generalisations are full of inaccuracies because they are broad, but that doesn't make them bad. People should start broadly before going indepth as to be able to correctly situate the knowledge that they do gain. Furthermore, if they only read "correct" histories, then they aren't able to judge for themselves what is right or wrong and instead have to give up thinking in order to accomodate a dogma that is, at best, only seen today-- by some people-- as being the least incorrect. As all wisdom is a process from ignorance to an aspirational, and largely imaginary, endpoint, cutting people off from "incorrect" knowledge-- especially for their benefit-- is both counterproductive in terms of science and, in Mill's position, dangerous for our collective understanding of a topic. Yes, I know this is a comedy sketch, but that these experts in the field don't make arguments but instead refer dogmatically to concepts with no reference to why said criticisms are valid beyond their short hand is itself an uncritical acceptance or rejection based solely on ideological grounds.
Nice video though.
Same thing happens when someone asks about headphones
This isn't even funny it's literally just a documentary about my life. Academics react as if they're in physical pain if you mention Jared Diamond, which I kinda get, cause you really can't trust him on the details, but I think a little bit of so-called "geographic determinism" isn't the stupidest idea in the world. Seas, rivers, and mountains are more real than political borders, and crops and livestock have been the main factors in the lives of probably 90% of humans to have ever lived for the last few thousand years. It's not that bad compared to the average person's understanding of history, which tends to consist of stuff like "Romans were good but then became decadent or something, then some Game of Thrones type shit happened, then America invented freedom. Oh and maybe aliens!?? Btw, brown people don't exist."
As a masters history student, i actually sometimes love to read the older rather outdated non-fiction books, they’re sometimes a lot more fun and light. Like this book Victoria’s Little Wars, written in the 70s, endlessly reeking of British neo-imperialist nostalgia but still genuinely exciting and interesting cuz rather than overly complex it just tells all these grande adventures of soldiers in faraway lands.
"From 1462 to 1464". EXACTLY the time period I wanted to learn about. How did you know?!
I am a professional historian at this point somehow and I did know of every single book they said in the beginning before the academic section. None of them are well reputed. Short answer is each of them is really serving some political agenda. That being said, academia today isn’t much better. This is why I read lots of histories from the WW2 era. They don’t have these problems but at the same time there are really good modern histories. To get into history I’d recommend The Discovery of Yesterday by tamim ansary and atrocities by Matthew white.
I think the best option is to read a LOT, so you can see all the different perspectives and form your own conclusions
I mean, aside from having a bunch of glaring errors and debunked things in it, does Guns Germs and Steel still have something to it as far as some of the broader point it’s trying to make? Like are Geographic location and allocation of some domesticatable plants/animals/more easily accessible metals etc not at all determinant in certain populations being able to dominate and exploit other parts of the world, even if some of the examples of that, and history related to it, were wrong? Just a question from a definite laymen who read the book ages ago, in high school I’m pretty sure.
Yes, but Diamond is not the first person to think of geographical/environmental determinism as a historical mechanism. Countless scholars have advocated for or against just how big of a factor it is for literally millennia. Diamond just broke through to the popular consciousness, and heavily overstated the evidence for environmental determinism to try and make it a far more important historical mechanism than even its advocates in serious historical circles would claim. A simple historical narrative sells books, and so many events had to be contorted to suit this narrative in order for the book to work as a piece of pop history.
I'm enjoying Lies My Teacher Told Me, glad this video didn't ruin it for me lol.
Yeah, I'm Not Paying for That: A Survey of Digital Piracy in My Bedroom from 2001 to Present and How You Can't Make Me Stop
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Wow, this kond of hits close to home for me:
I was a huge fan of poorly researched pop-history (kind of still am).
Therfore thought, studying history would be a good idea.
Learned the hard way, that correctly applying the scientific method is tougher than it looks.
Tryed to come to terms with the fact, that studying history was nothing like I thought it would be for 8 semesters.
Dropped out without a degree.
Btw, I did find a different job later on and everything turned out alright for me, it's just, I am very familiar with this struggle between entertainig historical "facts" and historical facts, for which there is actual evidence.
"The best sources are not the ones that aren't biased, but the ones that are **openly** biased."
_-DJ Peach Cobbler_
I've been reading academic Medieval History for 30 years and this video perfectly, but probably unintenionally, encapsulates the ideological capture of academic history that has accelerated over the last 20 years. I now treat modern academic history with the same caution I used to reserve for pop history and the word "intersection" in the title is perhaps the biggest red flag of all.
I don't read pop history so can't comment on any of the books highlighted in the video. I'm certainly not defending them.
Tbf at least homeboy didn't say he was reading Graham Hancock.
Honestly this is a struggle when you become an expert in any field. I'm a Quaternary palaeoecologist and every time I bring that up I have to listen to someone talk about Sapiens or go on some Hancock-inspired tirade about the Younger Dryas
also those history books about humanity from well known zion1st author…
Look for a book with the largest footnote or endnote section with modest period and geographical scope.
Sapiens is by far one of the most damaging pop anthropology books. It's really frustrating that any social science section of a book store will have multiple different versions of it.
There are some pop-history authors that are genuinely great though, Antony Beevor, Orlando Figes, Peter Hopkirk, as a masters history student I’ve really enjoyed their stuff, they do many different topics, but are quite reliable.
I'm going to piss off everyone and say right now. 'Guns, Germs, & Steel' is a good book and anyone who says otherwise is being a pretentious gatekeeper.
Yes it's reductive, but it's an intro to a massive topic and is a book that brings people in to reading non-fiction. It is the stepping stone towards reading more specialised books, which can then be in a position to give greater nuance.
GG&S is (according to its own text) intended to debunk racist ideas of "white people are just better than everyone else" which is an idea nobody (well hardly anybody) in academic believes anyway so to them it's just an oddly pointless generalised overview. It's aimed at a general audience by design, it's got a lot of flaws but it does get its main point across. If people want to follow up then they'll find the controversies, but I think it's been written for people who *won't* and at least now they don't think Europeans are essentially magic genius unicorns.
My freshman year of high school I took a world history class that was ENTIRELY built around Guns, Germs, and Steel 20 years after its release. The teacher was a self-proclaimed Libertarian who made a bunch of 14-year-olds debate free trade versus fair trade for our final. Go to public school guys.
Okay, protip for people who are truly interested in reading actual academia and to learn more abt ancient civilizations (from a Classicist and baby Egyptologist), go onto google scholars, and look up the key words related to what you are interested in. Next, filter out all the content that is before the 21st century (1980s or 90s is acceptable sometimes but post 21st cent is best) and read those if they are available to you, if not, contact anyone you know who has access to an educational institution and ask them to open it for you, then, find the references in those papers (these should date from as early as the onset of the classics field to fairly recent), and read those “with discernment”. That is where the most up to date and most critical debates are happening, and it’s more available than we are lead to believe; if I have to debunk one more ”heated debate” that was literally from the academia discussion 50 yrs ago I swear-
Academia changes fast, especially the field of classics. For reference for the stuff I’m interested in reading about I sometimes don’t even go for pre 2010s papers lol, and the same for books.
I recommend the Coldest Winter if you want a great book on the Korean War. Or for Vietnam, check out Matterhorn!
As someone who exclusively reads fiction, this amuses me severely, because l'll never have that problem.
so crazy to stumble across this just as I am realizing on my own that all Pop non-fiction is bunk
1:53, his argument is that the statistically documented rate of violent crime has quantitatively decreased (which is true) and he tries to explain why through cognitive psychology. None of that is the historical nonsense that its detractors claim it is
Yes that's the argument Pinker makes, but historians take issue with how Pinker glosses over how the methods that the statistics have been gathered dramatically changes depending on the time period and society, and that's not a great foundation for the conclusions Pinker draws. Many/some historians probably agree with his core premise but all of them take issue with his methods for arguing it.
@@0sm1um76 That’s really a matter of Pinker not being a professional historian but not really an indictment of his book as such
Personally, my favorite history book is "Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States", by renowned historian David Barry.
Thank God he didn't mention "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari, I'm sure the history teacher would have had a heart attack.
Diamond is a classic case of devising a simplistic hammer and pretending every issue is a nail.
I remember when I read GG&S in 2002 thinking "wow..... How informative! I feel WAYY smarter now! I read SMART stuff for fun!" As I copiously patted myself on the back. I was 19 what did I know? 😂
I was literally just about to buy Guns, Germs and Steel 😭😂
I love Eurocentric history
Just go right to the primary sources!
That way you always have a good explanation why you read it, and the authors usually had a lay person in mind
For example:
Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Hernán Cortés wrote good books about the conquest of Mexico.
Ulysses S. Grant produced a descend autobiography.
The Austrian painter had a very important book (which makes you look daring for handling it).
"Commentarii de bello Gallico" by Caesar is mandatory reading for a Latin student (No historian will accept you if you do not know it).
Adam Smith "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" as a basic for modern economy.
...
And the Best?
Usually they are completely free because every copyright already lapse!
Absolutely do not go straight to the primary sources, because primary sources often heavily distort what happened to justify their actions. This is part of why Diamond's work is so bad - he did just that, and only relied on the primary sources of the conquistadors, without the mountain of evidence that contradicts the conquistador accounts. The conquistadors were trying to glorify themselves to gain political favor in Spain during a time in which the Spanish monarchy was trying to oust them, lest they try and become kings in the new world and usurp their authority. That is the primary goal of their works - not accurate historical accounting. Taking them at face value is a terrible mistake - the great thing about secondary sources is that they can look at *all* of the primary sources, and all of the various pieces of evidence, because they can be written by people who dedicate their life to finding all such evidence, and compile it into one place for those who don't have that kind of time to read.
Ooof. This video hurts with how historically accurate and specific it is.
This video acts as if there are not tons of disagreement between experts in any given field.
Just because one historian hates a certain argument does not mean its false and vice versa for it being true.
Literally just read and think about the arguments yourself instead of relying on other peoples interpretations and opinions.
Also, the vast majority of the arguments against the "bad books" are not based in any real factual disagreements but mearly a disagreement with the specific moral or political narratives in them.
If all the arguments are, "well that book has bad politics" its not really a reason not to read unless as i said, youre just reading to seem smart within a given group.
But Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker are not experts in the fields they wrote these books in. Jared Diamond showed a complete lack of understanding of the Spanish Conquest throughout chapter 3 of GGS, for example.
The real method is to read the inaccurate/biased ones with the knowledge that they are in fact inaccurate/biased, and to read multiple different works about the same periods so you get a broader idea of it all. Knowledge ought yo be cross pollinated.
The criticisms of Guns, Germs and Steel are valid, but it also did make a great contribution in highlighting and integrating under-discussed environmental and agricultural factors that played a major role in history.
Whats actually INSANE is that I started guns, germs, and steel today 😂😂
The Man-date of Heaven is a goated title
Read the popular books, just make sure to also read the major criticisms of those books. This is not just for pop books but for academic books as well.
Read em anyway
I thought the second one was gonna be Sapiens.
It almost was, lol.
@@genericallyentertaining Why did you leave "Sapiens" out? Too obvious?
Naomi Oreskes' The Rejection of Continental Drift and Merchants of Doubt are great history of Science books from someone with an Environmental Geology and Water Quality Hydrology degree.
Merchants of Doubt is not a very "Specialist" kind of book
Welp, guess my copy of Guns, Germs and Steel is going back into the shelf.