I would like to read and learn as much history as possible, what is the most effective and most efficient way to do this? I get tired of Wikipedia's exhausting layout, and verbose writing. I get tired of Britannica's overly simplified elaboration of the events. Where do I find the best resources for history? Should I just download "Russian Revolution" pdfs and read it? What if those books make history more complicated? History books are almost always 600 pages long. They also overuse adjectives. I don't want to watch History documentaries too as they always overexaggerate events (eg: "The XYZ event was one of the largest, most explosive, and the most controversial revolution in the early 20th century"). It's obnoxious.

Where do I find good sources that does not overuse adjectives, does not overexaggerate, and elaborates the appropriate amount of information about the event?

Thanks!

Im pretty sure this question is relevant to history but if not feel free to delete this mods.

I'm a layperson so I probably have the wrong understanding. My current understanding of why the Great Men view of history is not taken seriously by historians is because society and culture influences history rather than what individual people like Washington or Hitler did. So the actions of individual people are relatively unimportant to history. But doesn't this remove agency and free will from people? If individuals don't matter or have enough influence to change things, doesn't that lead to historical determinism?

First time poster, I love this sub, thank you!

I noticed the rule about not asking about events in the last 20 years, and it reminded me of something.

In all of my formal education (I was not a history major in college), I remember thinking that the history courses always seemed to end just when they were getting interesting, that is, when they began to connect to events that I (as a young person) might have some knowledge of.

I was alive before the Cold War ended, but about the time I finished my last core history class in college I sat down and did some research on the Cold War because it wasn't really covered in much detail in my classes.

I understand the reason for the rule here - you want to focus on history, not recent events. But my question is about the teaching of history.

Has anyone else noticed this?

And, is there a rule or practice against connecting historical events to recent events, or is it just a tendency?

Did one immediately get more power in some way? Did one all of a sudden have more responsibility? Any particular perks? How, specifically, did a person’s life change the day after they joined the communist party?

I'm sure this was probably quite a gradual process but I was just wondering roughly when guns completely replaced bows and crossbows.

When we look at old passages from even scholarly sources of, say, Victorian England, it seems that people back then believed almost all women would face syncope at the drop of a hat. Fast forward to today and in my lifetime I’ve only seen two people faint: one was a woman and the other a man. It seems like this stereotype was rooted in fiction instead of fact, but then how did it persist for so long? Was it corsets? Did the stereotype exist in societies other than European ones?

Hitler never wanted to capitulate. It was victory or death. If they were going to be victorious or die in the fight, why would they care about a potential backlash from the international community?

Alexander the Great reported founded something like 70 new cities in his newly conquered areas. These cities were structured in the form of a Greek polis, and reportedly populated primarily by Greek settlers, who formed the new ruling elite in the Hellenistic kingdoms and empires. Now, presumably many of these cities were not large initially, and they may have had a substantial non-Greek population. And I presume many of these newly founded cities were really rebuilt existing cities? Even so, I presume each city must have had a couple of thousand Greek settlers at the very least? By ancient standards, that seems like a huge and very sudden movement of people. Alexander's army was smaller than 40,000 men, and presumably not all of these wanted to settle in these new lands. So we are talking of well over a hundred thousand Greek people migrating to the new cities. Where did they all come from? What induced them to move? Why was there no local resistance to this? How does Alexander founding a city even work? He declares "let's build a city here" and someone (his army?) forces local levees to start building, and then Greeks back home immediately decide to suddenly move there? Or he forces Greeks to settle there?

Like did none of his advisors or military staff see how brain dead this move was? Why did Lopez even do it; surely no one can be that stupid.

This may feel like an obvious question since artifacts not sitting right on the surface of the Earth are often buried millimeters to several meters below ground it but hear me out. I was reading "Children of Ash and Elm" by Neil Price and he casually mentions that the average height of land in Scandinavia was several feet lower when early Vikings were establishing themselves - allowing them to sail further up rivers, farm more land, and overall lay a broader, more stable, foundation for their civilization in a much easier way than it would be today.

While changing climates have had massive impacts on the course of history what about the height of land? Is what happened in Scandinavia a good analog for the planet or is this just what happened in this specific region and time?

I have read three (almost) volumes from Durant's massive 11 volume set, and am aware of their limitations as an authoritative source. But the prose is simply enjoyable, and it's coming from someone for whom English is a second language, and who is pretty much self-taught. How relevant are they now? Are there any equivalent titles that can be substituted in its place, since I suspect many of the references, interpretations and analyses of events in Durant's texts are now outdated, politically incorrect and could be flat out wrong?

Obviously many took them seriously and revered them, as they were an integral part of their society. But did some, most probably philosophers, treat them as charlatans or with contempt? The founding myth of Rome, famously, involves dispute over the interpretation of augury, which I find rather notable as it indicates to me the ancients were at least somewhat aware of some of the pitfalls with prophecy interpretation, unless there's a cultural dimension in the story lost to me (or us). I know other myths contain the misunderstood prophecy motif as well. But I'm curious whether there were early skeptics of such practices, and how they'd be viewed both by the common man and the state.

The question can also be applied to other major high-casualty catastrophes of the feudal era (Hattin, Legnica etc.)

Would there have been a wave of succession crises? Would a bunch of tenant farmers suddenly have been without lords? Obviously French feudal life didn't up and collapse, but surely there would have been major shocks to the system?

Could anyone who's been to multiple American Civil War museums weigh in? How does the Harrisburg museum compare to Richmond (Tredegar)? Is there a better one I'm missing?

I like a museum with lots of arms and personal items from major figures. I would prefer a museum that represents the life of the enslaved, too.

Much thanks!

I’m writing something and i just wonder if the zionists could have had economical motivations as well as religious for wanting that piece of land, the little I find about their economy around that time is far too complicated for em, that’s who I originally asked on r/explainlikeimfive

I want to rephrase this to be less leading (acknowledging it wasn’t necessarily the songwriter’s intention), and I hope it doesn’t trip up anyone writing a nice detailed response:

“Why did she regularly perform ‘The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,’ which could be seen as sympathetic to the confederacy?”

How come the people making "I love Lucy" were able to have this couple where the man was an immigrant at a time when interracial couples were forbidden from movies, and even outlawed in some states?

And it's not like they hid the fact that Ricardo was Cuban. They don't bring it up in every episode, but it does come up a few times

Edit: I misspelled "were" in the title, I will never outlive my shame