With the confederate flag and marriage equality there have been posts everywhere on social media about the history of the Confederates and how republicans were all about ending slavery and Democrats weren't and blah blah it's one post versus another it's it's honestly getting aggravating.
Are there a set of books by an author, or maybe a list somewhere of an objective and appropriately sourced history of the U.S. That anyone can recommend? Personally I'm tired of googling facts and want to educate myself appropriately. Any help is much appreciated.
this sub has a book list
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books
which is pretty good but i think what you "should" do is pick a slightly narrower field and ask for a reading list there. As for bias that's not something you can really eliminate (but you can easily eliminate most of the bad reductionist history passed on from social media/random emails) but what you should strive for is to find the legitimate competing theories on the question (aim for university press books) and read/skim multiple ones to get a better picture of the truth.
objective and appropriately sourced history
which are two sort of different things: i could play a "point out the bias" game on a lot of the books in the book list askhistorians has but because they are all pretty high quality history books that bias isn't going to be too problematic for interrogating social media historical narratives.
The Oxford History of the United States series is good for a look at any given period. All the writers are serious and credible. Each has his own views on historical debates but they don't push any political agenda that I can see.
Thanks for the help guys, I'll get started with what you recommended and try to narrow it down to a more specific subject.