[HPFGU-OTChatter] Don't Know Much About History . . .

[Kathryn Cawte]

 This is about to be the worst book recommendation ever - since I can't
think of the author's name. However I'm hoping I'm giving you enough info
that someone else can tell you what you need to know to find it. The guy who
wrote Band of Brothers (I don't mean whoever scripted the tv show I mean the
author of the book) is apparently great. I can't really claim to be great at
talking about history books because being an eternal student and historian I
m coming from a whole other level than you are - but my father never really
got into history as such and he has the book on Pegasus Bridge by this guy
and he reckons it's brilliant - very easy to read and with lots of
interesting detail. The books do tend to be focussed in on details rather
than covering the whole sweep of events - but to my mind that's where the
interest lies anyway. 

If you're interested in the bigger picture Eric Hobsbawm is a good writer of
(mainly) European history. He's a left-wing historian (you should always
know a bit about the author when reading history books aimed at anywhere
above primary school level imo), but not too overtly biased. He has a series
of "Age of ..." books (4 or 5 of them) covering from medieval period onwards
 They were required reading for first year undergrads at my uni - but that
doesn't mean they require prior knowledge to understand them. Uni students
on history courses in the UK tend to have specialized in many different
periods so the first year courses were designed to get us all knowing
something about everything, these were the books to use for that.

Failing that go into a decent bookstore (ie one with reasonably intelligent
staff who care about their merchandise) and see what they recommend. Ask
what sells best. And if you hit something deadly dull don't let it put you
off because I've never found a period of history that wasn't interesting but
I surely have found some dire books - including one that my tutor used to
recommend specific pages from since it had useful information but even he
couldn't plough his way through it without falling asleep :)

K