Which popular historians do you trust?

None of them.

That sounds harsh, but let me explain. I don't really trust any historian--popular or not. There are some amazing historians out there that I think are much less likely to screw up than others, but people screw up all the time. I greatly respect Paul Preston's work, for example. Still, I read his latest work--The Spanish Holocaust--with a critical eye. You don't have to be radically skeptical of everything any historian says, but I think you shouldn't just trust me, much less someone else.

There are a bunch of popular historians that I like, though. Antony Beevor's work has been very good. Mark Kurlansky has been consistently very good. Rick Atkinson's recent trilogy was very good. I have really enjoyed a number of books from journalists and veterans about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well.

Do you have a particular subject that you're interested in? Have you checked out our book list?

A couple of preface comments:

1. [Meta] posts refer to issues within the 'sub not questions about historiography.
2. Popular historians do not tend to write historical articles. Articles are published in journals, such as the English History Review, Speculum, etc.. These are usually only read by academics or students.

I do not trust popular historians because they are writing for a popular audience and not an academic one. This means they have no incentive to qualify their statements or really pay attention to any contemporary historiographical debates. So if I were to 'trust' a popular historian then they would need to prove themselves first. This might create a confirmation bias as I'm unlikely to read a popular historian's book unless it's old or reputedly 'problematic' (as was the case with A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman - which someone will invariably recommend).

If you are looking for well-researched popular history then look for books written by professional academic historians.

The trouble here is distinguishing between whether these books are aimed at an academic or popular audience - and for that I can only recommend doing your market research. You'll only get out as much as you put in.

Two of my favourite popular histories written and researched by academics are by David Carpenter and Guy Halsall.

I'm a big fan of Margret MacMillian, she mainly writes about 20th Century diplomatic history. She has an accessible prose, but most importantly, she's damn smart and does her research.

I liked "Paris 1919" and am currently reading "The War that Ended Peace".

I would point to Charles Mann, author of 1491 and 1493, as an example of pop-history/anthropology done right. Mann is less attempting to push his own theory than he is popularizing the academic consensus while highlighting promising trends in the research. More importantly, he does this with a firm grasp on what makes an academic position accepted and useful, rather than controversial and "exciting."

He's broadcasting and translating academia, in other words, instead of pushing his own agenda. He's also hunting horses instead of zebras.

Contrast this with someone like, oh let's say, Gavin Menzies, author of Shit I Pulled Out of My Ass. He writes with a clear agenda to "prove" his own position, and utilizes the thin, conspiracy level evidence to do so. It's red flags all over the place.

Like domini_canes notes though, all sources need to be critically evaluated. The best way to do this is to, well, read more. It's not simply a matter of 9 out of 10 pop histories agreeing, but of checking their sources and even reading the primary source material itself (when available). Jumping into reading academic articles really isn't that huge of a stretch. Just with regards to access, JSTOR offers what is essentially a library card with their free account. Just about any university library will also have public access, with varying levels of availability to their online journal access, but always providing a wealth of hardcopy material.

I'd always recommend reading multiple sources on a topic before solidifying your own position. Cramming in some journal time not only allows you to read several different views in the time it takes to read a book, but also builds your knowledge base so you can start to identify what popular writings are full of shit, simplified, well-done, etc.

George Chauncey. I love cultural histories and discourse (Foucault) analysis. I'd highly recommend his book "Gay New York."

I don't know whether it'd be appropriate to call him a "popular historian" given his professional background, but I pretty much trust Ronald James (/u/itsallfolklore) unequivocally when it comes to the history of folklore. I don't know if there are any modern books on folklore that are more accessible to a lay audience than his "Introduction to Folklore".

Richard Rhodes does good, solid work and is copious with his citations. He's a good model of someone who, while not trained formally as a historian, understands the job and can also write extremely well for a general audience. He's doesn't oversimplify things. On nuclear matters his work is as reliable as the work of academic historians (if not more reliable than some of the academics). The only things I have ever seen Rhodes' work be criticized by is that he takes a very individual-centric narrative mode — he wants to show you the magical moment when inspiration dawned on any given issue. Academic historians of science and technology would point out that inspiration and understanding are tricky things, and not always (and perhaps not often) encapsulated in one, easy moment. But one can see why, for works aimed at a popular audience, this narrative mode is used.

Unfortunately, one cannot keep their cake and eat it, too. There are many academic writers who are competent-to-excellent prosists. The most informative history possible (of anything worth writing a whole book on) would be very long and extremely dense. Mitigating the density through prosic hand holding, so to speak, would make the work unreasonably long and add nothing to your understanding, thereby being self-defeating.

For a popular history to be a good history, a subject would need to exist where a small cast of characters with a moving narrative with little debate over the facts could give you the best possible version of an event. I think such situations are astronomically rare in the time span since documentation itself was invented.