How do I know if I'm reading a good/up to date history book?

[Tonguez]

Generally speaking, in the library world, we remove history books 5-10 years after publication. (Unless it's a standard or classic.)

This essentially, I advise my students that if they are looking at history books, see what's in the library as they are more likely to be reputable and up to date.
There is a lot of junk history out there, especially with self publishing being a thing and older works being products of their time or missing more recent research.

And then they go to Wikipedia.

Yes the accursed Wikipedia!

I do tell my students that they can look at the Wikipedia for the Reference List used on a topic, and then read that material

 

[Umbran]

So, historians of ENWorld, if I want to read an approachable history book without being a historian myself, how do I know if I'm reading something up to date, or if I'm just filling my head with nonsense?

Well, first and foremost - a book cannot be up to date if it isn't recent. Check the copyright date.

From there, do a bit of googling about the author - if they are widely considered a chucklehead, avoid them. Reddit's "As a Historian" can be helpful. Reviews on Goodreads might also give you some insight.

 

[GreyLord]

So, many years ago, I went to college and had to take a class on Historiography. At the time, one really good way is to look at the Books Bibliography.

One particular book I remember as a bad example of badly written history was a best seller. When one looked at it's bibliography, it did not make sense. It referred to statistics and numbers to cookbooks, rat biology to songs, and other weird stuff which had no correlation to what the book was actually written about. In otherwords, it had a fake bibliography to give it the veneer of being a good history book, but in reality was completely bunk.

Another way is to look to see if it has been peer reviewed. The more the better. See what the peer review says about it (these are not everyday newspaper reviews or such, but peer reviewed by those who are in the same field with doctorates and degrees who also do research in the same area as the paper or book that was written).

 

[billd91]

Well, first and foremost - a book cannot be up to date if it isn't recent. Check the copyright date.

Keeping in mind that even a history book with an older copyright date might still be the most recent book for that particular topic or might offer a valuable viewpoint, particularly if they’re chronicling events that were contemporary to the authors.

I‘d also recommend considering where you’re getting the book from. An academic library is probably going to have more aggressive collection development and weeding than a smaller, local town library.

 

[MGibster]

ears ago, on another site, I got sneered at for expressing enthusiasm for a history book that this other person, apparently a historian specializing in the field, viewed as outdated and laughably wrong. As a layperson, I didn't know of any way to see how current the scholarship on a subject is or to see how well-regarded a history book is. And online bookseller reviews are badly compromised even just for general consumer purposes.

I went to graduate school for public history, and that guy was what we in the biz call an %#%#%#. Unless you were spouting crock pot theories like ancient aliens built the Washington Monument or that slavery had nothing to do with the American Civil War he had no cause to come down on you. But then I have a different perspective in that I worked at an archive and later a museum where I regularly engaged with laypersons.

When it comes to history books, check their bibliographies and footnotes and if you see the same sources cited those are probably the important ones. As an example, if you were to start researching Scottish Witchcraft you're probably going to see Christina Larner's Enemies of God pop up fairly frequently because Larner made a considerable contribution to the body of scholarly work on the subject that others are still expanding on. If a book keeps coming up, there's a good chance it's worth looking at. But take care, if you're doing any research on witchcraft in early modern Europe, Margaret Murray's The Witch-Cult in Early Modern Europe might be mentioned and most scholars today regard it as mostly poppycock.

Check the publication date of the book you're reading and try to find somethin published more recently. Enemies of God was published in 1981, but if you keep looking into Scottish witchcraft, you'll get names like Julian Goodare and Scottish Witches and Witchhunters (2013) and other publications. Check Wikipedia for articles on whatever subject you're interested and then mine the biblography.

 

[MGibster]

And then they go to Wikipedia.

While it's almost never appropriate to cite Wikipedia when doing academic research, we had an assignment to look up articles and critique them. What we generally found was that Wikipedia articles were actually pretty good so long as you steered clear of controversial topics. I was assigned to critique a Wikipedia article about The Battle of Cowpens (American Revolution 1781) and it was a pretty good article. Wikipedia can be a great source of information, especially when you can mine the article for sources.

 

[Smackpixi]

So, I’m going to offer a different take. Doesn’t matter. You liked the book, it was a great book, was it what historians generally regard as correct now? doesn’t matter.

history is contested, there is no official or truely correct version of past events. Look at the news today, there is so much misinformation and wrong stuff being spouted that a good chunk of the population believes to be true. Fast forward 50 years and people sorting through contemporaneous reports will have a devil of a time sorting out what’s bs And what is not.

you liked a book and ran into someone perhaps as knowledgeable as the author but who trusts different contemporaneous reports and artifacts more than those the author does. Who’s really right? What matters, the suffering of the conquered, or the galloping of the conquerors? And sometimes, did the battle even happen?

unless you are a historian actively engaged in studying a thing, perfectly fine to like any take on the subject matter. even if it’s old. The currently accepted take on past history likely isn’t what it was 20 years ago, but it also probably will be different in another 20 years.

that said, history is not meaningless and impossible to understand, but the current priorities and values of historians will always color their understanding of the past. What “really happened” no longer matters, but what it means to us today absolutely does. And that is not a fixed thing.

 

[MGibster]

unless you are a historian actively engaged in studying a thing, perfectly fine to like any take on the subject matter. even if it’s old. The currently accepted take on past history likely isn’t what it was 20 years ago, but it also probably will be different in another 20 years.

Well, not quite. Holocaust denial, the Lost Cause Narrative of the US Civil War, the Burning Times, various ethnocentric historical views including Afrocentrism, Indigenous Aryans, or Sun Language theory, racist pseudo-history, and Hinduism, a belief that ancient Indians were technologically advanced including having nuclear power, are all either outright harmful or a gross misunderstanding of the past often to serve current social needs. i.e. It is not perfectly fine to buy into the Lost Cause Narrative or Holocaust denial. i.e. History matters.

 

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

As per others, mostly stick to more recent books. One method that can be fruitful is to look at a few syllabi for the history period in question and then look at the required texts for that class. Use the bibliography and further/recommended works in those books for additional books to read.

 

[Smackpixi]

Well, not quite. Holocaust denial, the Lost Cause Narrative of the US Civil War, the Burning Times, various ethnocentric historical views including Afrocentrism, Indigenous Aryans, or Sun Language theory, racist pseudo-history, and Hinduism, a belief that ancient Indians were technologically advanced including having nuclear power, are all either outright harmful or a gross misunderstanding of the past often to serve current social needs. i.e. It is not perfectly fine to buy into the Lost Cause Narrative or Holocaust denial. i.e. History matters.

For real? Thanks for the pile of straw men. Just because ancient aliens don’t exist doesn’t mean there isn’t a whole lot of uncertainty about Alexander, Viking raids or even NYC in the 70’s. I presumed the OP was a genuinely curious person studying real history, you should maybe apologize to him for assuming he shared your obsession about weird stupid stuff.