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

[Umbran]

you should maybe apologize to him for assuming he shared your obsession about weird stupid stuff.

Mod Note:
After being pretty rude about this, suggesting someone else owes an apology is pretty ironic.

Don't make it personal. Maybe you think that those things are weird or stupid - then actually make a case they are, rather than assert apologies are necessary without giving your position any support.

 

[aco175]

I like to keep an open mind, but verify.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'll just flag @Ruin Explorer . I believe he is a historian, so may have something to say on this topic.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'll just flag @Ruin Explorer . I believe he is a historian, so may have something to say on this topic.

Only by degree sadly, I used to a legal researcher and am now in legal tech.

That said some of the principles in research hold.

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?

First off, the guy who was being rude to you sucks.

I mean, sure you sometimes get people acting like they're experts because they read one dodgy book or worse watched one Youtube video, or even worse, read one tweet, and it can be hard to resist not taking them down a peg, but I very much doubt that was what you were doing, based on your posts here.

But like, @Umbran puts it really well here:

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.

I'd add to things to this:

1) Re: Goodreads, a lot of people voting on there trend pretty hard towards not liking anything that's too intellectually challenging and/or doesn't fit their biases (whether fiction or non-fiction), but that's often evident in their reviews so fairly easy to account for.

2) Re: up to date - some areas of history and archaeology move a lot faster than others. There are books from early last century which still have some relevance (usually only seriously academic ones though, which won't be what you'll be buying), and there are books published 5-10 years ago which are already out of date. And everything in-between. So this can be tricky - but if you're looking at a specific area of history, you can probably find out fairly easily if there's been a lot of change lately.

Oh yeah and re: chuckleheads, one thing you can always do is put author name and controversy into Google and see what comes up. That there is controversy doesn't necessarily mean the author is bad or wrong, but you might want to know what people are saying.

Points others have made re: bibliographies are also very good, if a bit harder to engage with when new to the field.

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.

I mean, you're proving his point here. None of what he listed are "straw men" nor "weird stupid stuff", and whilst they're more extreme examples, there are things that certain books, particularly older ones, get terribly wrong (often contradicted by more recent archaeology).

One of your examples is particularly questionable - Viking raids - there is actually a huge amount of uncertainty about them, particularly re: who in Scandinavian societies were doing them, how frequent they were, who they targeted, what equipment they used and so on. A history book from 1950 or to a lesser extent 1980 is going to have a lot of stuff that is indeed outdated and wrong.

Even the study of Alexander's conquests has changed a fair bit over my lifetime, despite people being obsessed with them for centuries. Though certainly less so than some fields.

I will note that unfortunately recency can't entirely eliminate nonsense, because there are still cranks like Graham Hancock out there - who published a book last year which is absolute nonsense of the highest order.

 

[Gradine]

I like to keep an open mind, but verify.

View attachment 322462

I feel like this image is missing a ridiculous misattribution, like "-Doctor Who, Star Wars"

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I feel like this image is missing a ridiculous misattribution, like "-Doctor Who, Star Wars"

I'll see that and raise you "Doctor Q, Babylon 5"

 

[MGibster]

I mean, you're proving his point here. None of what he listed are "straw men" nor "weird stupid stuff", and whilst they're more extreme examples, there are things that certain books, particularly older ones, get terribly wrong (often contradicted by more recent archaeology).

I once came across a historian in the early 20th century who argued it was unlikely Thomas Jefferson had an affair with Sally Hemmings becuase he was too "effeminate." Given that Jefferson was macking on his neighbor's wife when he was a younger man, I found the idea that he was too effeminate to chase women to be a bit incredulous.

 

[SJB]

It’s worth checking what the major university presses have published on the subject in the past decade. Good history presses include Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Yale University Press. These books will have been properly peer reviewed and use academic apparatus. University presses usually have trade-academic divisions - i.e. they do not just publish monographs based on PhD theses and the like.

In the UK Research Excellence Frame work - acknowledged to be the global gold standard - research is graded on its originality, rigour and significance. In History (unlike many other disciplines) research books dominate the upper reaches of the grading.

With some sense of the field it’s then possible to take a view on pure trade books. Quite often they offer popularized/dumbed down versions of what has been available to professionals for some time. However, depending on one’s need for accuracy, reliability and insight that might be quite sufficient.

For what it’s worth I am an academic historian who has done a lot of research assessment.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I once came across a historian in the early 20th century who argued it was unlikely Thomas Jefferson had an affair with Sally Hemmings becuase he was too "effeminate." Given that Jefferson was macking on his neighbor's wife when he was a younger man, I found the idea that he was too effeminate to chase women to be a bit incredulous.

There's a story that's probably inappropriate for ENWorld I could tell about college and making assumptions about other guys based on how typically they presented along gender norms. Let's just say that historian should have spent more time mixing with living people before forming opinions about human behavior.

 

[MGibster]

There's a story that's probably inappropriate for ENWorld I could tell about college and making assumptions about other guys based on how well they presented along gender norms. Let's just say that historian should have spent more time mixing with living people before forming opinions about human behavior.

Something I perhaps should have clarified, when the historian referred to Jefferson as effeminate it had more to do with his general disposition, his personality, than it did with his sexual orientation. i.e. That he displayed effeminate traits like being passive, not interested in such relationships, or not bold enough to initiate one.