Basically, I wanna dedicate 2021 to gaining a high-level understanding of history, from Stone Age to the present. My school was meh at teaching history, and my self-education was really haphazard, so I've got these gaping holes.
For example, I still have no idea how 7 Year War is different from 30 Year War, wtf is Peace of Westphalia, how Early Middle Ages are different from High Middle Ages, who the hell were Sassanids and why did they lose to Muslims so easily, how the hell did Pannonian Avars magically became Hungarians, and all that crap.
I see smarty-pants talking about this stuff online, and it really intimidates me, but history in general sounds super interesting, so I wanna be able to have a meaningful conversation about some cool historical events one day.
In 2022 I'll start to specialize. My interests are Early Modern colonialism (specifically Dutch East India Company shenanigans in Indonesia) and the history of right-wing conspiracy nutjobism (ever since I've listened to that episode of Behind the Bastards on Phyllis Schlafly, I can't stop seeing how modern reactionaries from Jordie Peterson to QAnon can be traced to earlier iterations of the same shit). I'm also partial to Achaemenid Persia and history of early Buddhism (especially how it ended up in Sri Lanka and most of South-East Asia), but these are lesser priority.
But that's in the future. For now I just wanna gain a bird's eye view.
The way I envision it, is that I want a very low barrier to entry, low commitment book club: no deadlines, no pressure, read at any pace whatever the hell you want, just share your impressions and reviews every once in a while. Basically, if you're a “theory is hard, I'm a complete child” type person like me, you should feel most welcome.
In the past few months I've been listening to a lot of The Great Courses (no need to buy them on Audible, there are torrents available), and this year I plan to tackle /r/AskHistorians general reading list.
If that sounds like something you might be interested in, do comment below :).
There's a book by Paul Cockshott called "How the World Works" which is a historical materialist account of how labor evolved from prehistory to present.
Sounds like a great idea! I'd be interested to pop in and out for sure. I feel like I have an ok grasp of basic European history, but the further out you go the shakier my knowledge gets haha.
Do you have any recs for veeeery general books to start with? One of my friends has recently become interested in having a better understanding of history but I'm not sure what to give her - all the stuff I read assumes you have some basic knowledge (e.g. you don't know much about the Persians but you're familiar with the Greeks) and she doesn't have any. History wasn't taught well at my school either, a bit useless unless you were super self-motivated. :')
Awesome! Would you be interested in a Discord server or something like that?
From my experience, I madly enjoy The Great Courses. They are available on Audible, but if you don't wanna support Bezos, you can find torrents by entering «the great courses torrent site:reddit.com» on Google. They are audio university lectures on all kinds of subjects, including history, and there are hundreds of them. They are done by legit university professors, so that's a plus. I never thought of myself as an audiobook guy, but I walk a lot (commuting to work), and I also listen to audiobooks every time I'm cooking, cleaning etc.
The ones that I particularly enjoyed were A Brief History of the World by Peter N. Stearns and History Of The Ancient World: A Global Perspective by Gregory S. Aldrete. The former is especially interesting. It's great, because it introduces sorta systemic thinking about history, instead of reciting facts about a particular empire in isolation, it investigates connections between things, like how Mongolian conquests influenced the spread of Bubonic Plague, or how the Fall of Constantinople led to Columbus sailing west etc. It's also problematic, because the thing about non-socialist academic historians is that they are incredibly transgressive when they write about long time ago history, but the closer they get to the 20–21 centuries, the more toothlessly liberal they become. I remember being really disappointed in the last few lectures of that course after so many incredibly strong chapters, because the ones about 20 and 21 centuries were like «so globalization is a thing, you know… isn't that peculiar? and what's up with the Internet changing things so radically? hmm»
The one that I really enjoyed despite its serious flaws is World History: The Fertile Crescent to the American Revolution by Linwood Thompson. It's geared towards high-schoolers (so at the level “I literally know nothing about history”), which already means that it grossly oversimplifies things and introduces pernicious narratives that are often weaponized by dilettante right-wingers, especially of the pimple-faced gamer variety. Nevertheless, I have a soft spot for it, because the guy does hilarious theatrical presentations of each lecture, like in one on Russian history he does an atrocious Russian accent roleplaying Princess Olga, and humor, however terrible, greatly helps learning.
For reading, instead of listening, I think /r/AskHistorians general reading list is the best start. I haven't read any of them, but /r/AskHistorians is considered extremely high quality history subreddit, and they pretty much unanimously vouch for especially A Little History of the World by Ernst Gombrich. Apparently it's a children's book, but incredibly well-written, so adults can enjoy it too.
For YouTube stuff I personally like Kings & Generals. Despite a corny name, they are BreadTube-adjacent & very high production quality. They do contain inaccuracies from time to time, though.
If I think of anything else, I'll let you know, but I'm not a historian and I barely know any of this stuff myself (hence me making this post to begin with).
Of course, there's always Crash Course World History by John Green on YouTube, KhanAcademy World History, but they are so basic to the point that I'd rather recommend skipping them and diving into slightly more academic material regardless of prerequisite background. Surprisingly, university lectures & serious books are actually way more enjoyable once you get over the initial psychological barrier.
Wow, thanks so much for the recs!!
I picked up the Gombrich book after seeing it in the /r/AskHistorians post you linked in the OP! I've been listening to it for half an hour and I think it's not for me (it's a little too basic and I'm personally not into the tone) buuuut my friend is really excited about it. So thank you for that!! I hope she enjoys it, and if not we'll move on to the other recs :D Also I suddenly realised my parents have Gombrich's The Story of Art, which is a history of art for adults, so now I'm intrigued to check that out.
I'm interested in your description of the Stearns course and the Kings & Generals channel for myself too. I'll check them out!
the closer they get to the 20–21 centuries, the more toothlessly liberal they become
I have that feeling about a lot of history books yup. :') Enjoyed the first half of The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan very much, enjoyed everything after colonialism markedly less. He kept using the line "It was a disaster" re US and UK policy being thwarted lmao. What a way to describe imperialist policy not working out for the imperialists
A Discord server sounds fun, I'm in! :)
The Great Courses is a fantastic series. My dad bought them on CD for years and sent me them when he was done, so I got used to listening to them while driving. Then I discovered torrents and put them on my phone.
I think that is where stuff like history podcasts can come in helpful. In Our Time is a nice place to start, and they have reading lists for every episode if you want to learn more.
Pretty lib and often with fairly rosy view of empire (it is BBC after all) but the guests are usually good.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Arrighi:
world-systems analyst
Although in many ways intellectually close to Immanuel Wallerstein, Arrighi tends to ascribe greater significance to the recent shift in economic power to East Asia. He also emphasized his debt to Adam Smith, Max Weber, Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Karl Polanyi and Joseph Schumpeter.
Ehi, cazzo, this is exactly the shit I wanna dive into next year, once I'm done with baby history. World-system theory is super fascinating, thanks a lot, mate! :)
Gotta check out the related Annales School then too! I see there's already a Fernand Braudel book on that /r/askhistorians general reading list, but you also might want to check out his Civilization and Capitalism: 15th-18th Century trilogy because Arrighi's analysis is pretty heavily based on that.
Do you think it's realistic to have some kind of wiki or group document, where different participants contribute their own reviews/summaries/effortposts of what they've read or know?
The motivation of making a book club instead of just keeping plowing through books on my own is that I have this philosophy of learning, informed by my experience with spaced repetition and Anki, book Make It Stick, Peak by Anders Ericsson, Marty Lobdell's Study Less, Study Smart video, Stephen Chew from Samford University, and some others.
The philosophy is that reading a book from cover to cover just doesn't work. You don't remember anything, and even if you do, it lies deadweight in your brain, it's just pointless junk. You need to engage with the material, do a “dialectical” process if you will. This engagement can take many forms, recitation using Spaced Repetition Software, taking copious notes, connecting it somehow to already existing knowledge, and whatnot. And one such form of engagement is telling stuff that you've learned to other people. Maybe you just retell it in your own words, making sure you yourself understand what the hell you're talking about. Maybe the other person knows this stuff too, so you can ask them questions, argue with them, etc. But in any case, once you bounce what you've learned against other people, it stops being deadweight and becomes “integrated” kinda.
So I'm thinking, if people read a book, then write a summary in their own words (and the summary can include subjective and emotional perspectives as well), and other people read it and critique it, it could be an interesting exercise. Whatcha think?
I'm enthusiastically in favor! I've been trying to figure out how to do something similar for a while. It would be awesome to have some sort of "fundamentals of history for leftists" reading list.
