I literally don't know shit about history. I have no idea when the roman empire was a thing, don't know about any wars except the american ones, ww1, ww2, don't know shit about europe or asia, don't know shit about any ancient civilizations. pic unrelated
The Penguin History of the World, essentially an atlas of world history and will orientate you with the big picture. It is far from conclusive or correct, nothing of that scope can be, but if you keep it within the context of the big picture you will do well.
>I literally don't know shit about history.
You're not the only one. I'm in England and my niece is 18 and she knows nothing. (Actually, it's worse than that. She knows muh Holocaust and muh slavery but nothing else. Nothing at all would be an improvement.) My own education was appalling by my parents' standards, and hers was appalling by my standards.
This guy
is right. You absolutely need the big picture first. The problem is there's *too much* information available. If you just browse Wikipedia at random, you'll go into a hole of specialization. This board probably hates XKCD, and I don't entirely disagree, but he nailed this phenomenon. See picture.
>I have no idea when the roman empire was a thing, don't know about any wars except the american ones, ww1, ww2, don't know shit about europe or asia, don't know shit about any ancient civilizations.
I realized the same thing many years ago. I wrote down at random a list of things I didn't know:
— How many Crusades were there?
— Byzantine Empire? What's that about?
— Ottoman Empire?
— Mesapotamian Empire?
— Shia Muslims & Sunni Muslims. Is that like Catholics and Protestants?
— Incas, Aztecs, and Mayans. Which ones had the crocodile-headed god? Which ones did astronomy in base 60?
— Who came first, Catherine the Great or Peter the Great?
— Why were they so great?
— All those Chinese dynasties. Ming, Hung, Chang. What's going on with that?
— Did the Hundred Years' War really last a hundred years? Who fought it? Who won it?
etc
I realized there might be far more that I didn't even know I didn't know, as Donald Rumsfeld put it.
I did a bit of general exploring. One book I remember using was a fairly trashy "Win Any Pub Quiz!!!!" book called
The A-Z Encyclopedia of Almost Everything
by Trevor Montague
which had a "SUMMARY OF WORLD HISTORY" which is just 5-10 pages of events by date.
I made a conscious effort to agglomerate stuff; to go up the tree, not down it. Whenever I found that B was actually part of A, I would just ignore B and think about A. It's natural to go the other way. Eventually I had a sort of rough idea.
Yeah I realized I actually know a lot about world history compared to 99% of people but when I compare myself to an average English 10 year old in 1900 I realize I'm basically retarded. So sad how far we've fallen.
Just read Wikipedia articles about stuff you're interested in until you get hooked onto a specific topic. Then go read the sources listed at the bottom of articles.
If you're not pozzed, you'll be able to sift through even the most SJW-ish propaganda pieces ever written and extract the facts hidden therein.
A good history reader should always know that every text will contain some truths, some lies, some exaggerations, and that most details of "lesser importance" will be omitted. All texts are biased and no text is neutral.
kill yourself
I'm slow be patient
My tip is to read about one person or country or event you are interested and either continue more in depth or branch out from that. You'll learn a lot of quickly. Maybe not broadly but specify things you will gain good knowledge about
Kissinger's Diplomacy is a good place to start
Use wikipedia, youtube, and great courses (see /t/) for introductions. Learn to filter propaganda. After that read a mix of general histories and biographies.
enroll into primary school
Alright, here's a pro tip. World histories are not enough to cover history. They're gay, condensed and incomplete.
What you do is pick a country (probably your own) and find a nice 300-800 page book/collection of books and go through them. Then go to the next neighboring one repeat the process. Slowly expand the geographical area that you have information on and build an idea about the general history of the countries you're interested on. If you want, you can also read smaller pieces that cover more specialized areas, like smaller dynasties, movements and ideologies, they will greatly expand the detail and give you a better insight. They will also make you look at the more generalized histories differently.
Another thing to do is to change the approach you have to historybooks and to realize they're ultimately a subjective interpretation of the primary sources.
For finding books, simply typing shit like "history of rome" into google is enough. Then pirate the book.
Well which way is it???
Do this for general knowledge
History of the World (Arnold, Westad) > Civilizations of the Medieval Age (Norman F Cantor) > History of Modern Europe (Merriman)
If you want the most surface level, superficial take, read the world/continent histories. They won't provide you with anything more than a general overview. A 600 page book can maybe give you a overview of a single small country's history. There is no way they can give you a solid view of a continent, let alone the world.
The second and third books here
give you a lot more specifics
They are still broad books that cover way too much and leave too much out. I will also note that books of this span tend to give some sort of idea/vibe, rather than going for a concrete example of history.
For an example of what I consider an appropriate length and topic of book is Paul Miliukov's History of Russia in 3 books, that covers it in some 800 pages, going up to like 1932, and even then, having dipped into Solovievs history of Russia, I still have to criticize Miliukov for being too brief.
Most general histories written nowadays suck tbh. Try to find older ones ("the research being out of date" is a cope by modern academics, most of the time they haven't actually discovered anything new, and even if they have it's good to have a solid foundation before you get into researching various academic disputes)
I really want to spit in her face
Not because I hate her or anything, she just provokes my sadism
Masochism>sadism
I want her to wring my neck with a belt and piss on me
She's probably a sub
Unfortunately most are.
The story of civilization from Will Durant
Start with a grand narrative. Norman’s Europe or Barzun’s Dawn and Decadence are good. If you can find A History of World Cultures (earlier editions are cheaper, or pirate it), that’s a good presentation of history with more focus outside of Europe.
I think you should read a couple of these books to get your bearings, the main highlights and start to see where people differ in their telling.
After that you can start to dive into particular periods. The most useful today is knowing the world wars (which you probably do but not well) and then the French Revolution (actually the whole revolutionary period, the US is very important here). Understand how relativity recent the idea of nationhood is, and the ideas about people’s, rights and statehood you take for granted.
dawn of decade is meme history
this is terrible advice. No average person has the time or inclination to become a specialist just to know world history
Oppo, what you figure out after a while with history is it doesn't matter who tells the story as long as their prejudices don't get in the way. Any academic has to cover the same basic events and personalities to get it right. Their job is to try and inject explanatory theories and guide the reading on a line of reasoning best explaining what happened. But of course it's all unfalsifiable speculation and there is no real methodology.
Avoid Niel Ferguson. Avoid harari. Never read history shilled by a modern publisher or who gets on trendy mainstream political talk shows. Your best bet is always hoary stuff written by a professor specializing in the area you want to investigate. I enjoyed the wealth and poverty of nations by Landes but that's also a meme and rather dated.
>this is terrible advice. No average person has the time or inclination to become a specialist just to know world history
If you just want an overview of world history, feel free to watch youtube videos for it. It's easier than reading a book. And reading a book, two or three on the major historical players is far from being a specialist. A specialist would involve reading primary sources, which is not something I recommend without the education.
>Oppo, what you figure out after a while with history is it doesn't matter who tells the story as long as their prejudices don't get in the way.
Except they always do. Compare historiographies of any two nations about a controversial event. You'll find a lot of prejudices.
>Any academic has to cover the same basic events and personalities to get it right.
Lol. Lmao even.
Oh and something else. When looking into a country's history (which is what you should be going over when building a general understanding), try and get books from the authors that originate from those countries. British/American historians are mediocre, if not outright bad, oftentimes using lacking/wrong information and almost always pushing some narrative/idea onto history.
Ask yourself why you want to learn about history in the first place. If you have no reason you'll just become some r/historymemes retard who can tell you a dozen funny facts about the 16th century Bungabunga kingdom but barely knows his first name
>Gibbon, Rome
>Toynbe, Study of History
>Copelston, History of Philosophy
>Uzdavinys, Philosophy As A Rite Of Rebirth
>Spengler, Descent of the West
>Mosier, WW1 & Russo-German war
>Shelby Foote, Civil War
>Beiser, German Idealism
>Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas
>Frazer, Golden Bough
>Cambell, Hero with a Thousand Faces
There's some large survey histories that will serve you in good stead as primers for pursuing other shit.
>Initiates of the Flame, Manley Palmer Hall
Exists in audiobook form and will be adequate as a crash course in Western occult/esoteric throughline mostly ignored in intellectual/religious history.
>Gibbon
>toynbe
>spengler
>campbell
I'm putting on my clown suit...
read mein kampf
Watch this video over and over focusing on a specific area or dynasty each time