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<blockquote data-quote="overgeeked" data-source="post: 9187548" data-attributes="member: 86653">I'm not a historian, but I read a fair amount of history. As others have said, read multiple sources and check the bibliographies. Wiki can be great for sources to check out, if not always reliable for the information itself. But, if you're looking for a broad overview, it can be good enough. Popular histories, i.e. those that are readable by laypeople are generally the best place to start. It's best to avoid anything self-published or put out by super-small presses.You're never going to get anywhere close to the definitive capital &quot;T&quot; Truth when reading history. As mentioned, there are inherent biases in every human...and all sources are written by humans. There's also the question of availability/number of sources (see the example above of the Peloponnesian War vs the Vietnam War) and what the author decides to include or exclude. Read at least 3-4 books on a topic and stick with what at least 2-3 of them agree on.But a lot of stuff doesn't really matter. If one source says 23,209 soldiers died on a given day but another source says 24,000 soldiers died on that day...it doesn't matter. Neither author is lying to you, they're using different sources and/or using different methods to come to those numbers, or one's just rounding up.That said, getting the date of a battle or some historical figure's dates wrong is definitely a red flag. As an example, I was reading a book on the Great War (aka World War 1) and it got the date of Archduke Ferdinand's assassination wrong. I put it down and noted the name of the publisher so I could avoid anything by them in future. Turns out it was a self-published popular history book. It ended up in my TBR pile because it was a gift.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="overgeeked, post: 9187548, member: 86653"] I'm not a historian, but I read a fair amount of history. As others have said, read multiple sources and check the bibliographies. Wiki can be great for sources to check out, if not always reliable for the information itself. But, if you're looking for a broad overview, it can be good enough. Popular histories, i.e. those that are readable by laypeople are generally the best place to start. It's best to avoid anything self-published or put out by super-small presses. You're never going to get anywhere close to the definitive capital "T" Truth when reading history. As mentioned, there are inherent biases in every human...and all sources are written by humans. There's also the question of availability/number of sources (see the example above of the Peloponnesian War vs the Vietnam War) and what the author decides to include or exclude. Read at least 3-4 books on a topic and stick with what at least 2-3 of them agree on. But a lot of stuff doesn't really matter. If one source says 23,209 soldiers died on a given day but another source says 24,000 soldiers died on that day...it doesn't matter. Neither author is lying to you, they're using different sources and/or using different methods to come to those numbers, or one's just rounding up. That said, getting the date of a battle or some historical figure's dates wrong is definitely a red flag. As an example, I was reading a book on the Great War (aka World War 1) and it got the date of Archduke Ferdinand's assassination wrong. I put it down and noted the name of the publisher so I could avoid anything by them in future. Turns out it was a self-published popular history book. It ended up in my TBR pile because it was a gift. [/QUOTE]

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