Thucydides. Damn near impossible to understand in Greek, more than incoherent in translation, still a possession for the rest of time.

Churchill won a Nobel Prize for his historical and biographical works, including his history of WW2 (if you can call something that explicitly has a moral and labels it for easy access "history" /historiansnark).

Gibbon's "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" has a surprisingly spry writing style. His enthusiasm for the subject is clear, and it's a pleasure to read.

Just be warned: I understand that there has been a lot of criticism of his history since it was published, so read the book in that context. But even in that context, it's a pleasure to read, and it was an enormously influential book, so it's worth reading solely for understanding its place in history.

Two stand outs for me are:

1. The Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote
2. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer

Just some of the best writing ever.

Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb. I love everything about his writing style: the overall organizational structure—he weaves the biographies of all the major scientists and politicians together with the history of the science itself—and his sentences often read like a novelist's. One of my favorite history books.

Wellll I've got some books stuck in my mind for "fiercely individual style" of the entirely wrong sort! :)

Of opera history, I think John Rosselli had a nice clean style, no fluff, no purple, easy to read. Daniel Heartz is probably the most stylish, he's the sort of writer who can easily trick you into reading (literally) 1000 pages without really noticing.

Many authors cited here are well-known for their rhetoric and style, but their value as historians is debatable, especially the older ones like Gibbon. One historian's words that have I think stood the test of time is the work of Peter Brown, whose magisterial World of Late Antiquity (1971) is both still relevant in the modern day and an evocative and eloquent description of the past. A recent review of the book by James Howard-Johnston sums up my view quite well:

The World of Late Antiquity, published in 1971, carefully, copiously and aptly illustrated, captured the essence of those lectures. Peter Brown terms it nothing more than an essay. What an essay, though! Each chapter is an inspired riff on a theme: the new preoccupations of the late second and third centuries, say, which were at odds with traditional polytheism, or the influence exercised by the refined Platonism and traditional culture of the pagan intelligentsia on Christian leaders, the effect, likened to a lightning flash from a charged cloud, of the simple, brutal ascetism introduced into the Mediterranean world by St Antony. Brown’s genius — and he has genius — lies in his ability to catch the thoughts and half-articulated assumptions of all manner of human beings living in an alien world. He is a magician of the imaginaire.

As for the more humdrum phenomena of political and social history, he had much that was novel, interesting and persuasive to say, together with observations that strike the learned now as misguided or glib. The dynamic of a riff, a happy phrase, a cross-cultural comparison or an image could lead him astray. But again and again he hit on points of crucial importance — the many functions of the mandarinate in Byzantium, for example, or the estrangement of the Germanic governing elite from the Romanised population in most of the post-Roman West.

[...] His subsequent publications delve into many subjects touched on in The World of Late Antiquity. Very few historians can match his ability to enter other minds. As Frances Yates was to the Renaissance and Isaiah Berlin to the Russian intelligentsia in the 19th century, so is Guru Brown to the great philosophers and church leaders of Late Antiquity.

If you want both readability and reliability, you literally can never go wrong by reading Peter Brown.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee definitely counts here. The history may not be entirely perfect, but the writing is fantastic.

Moving to my own area (Mongols), Rene Grousset's Empires of the Steppes is probably the prime example. Very dated, rather Eurocentrist, but a great read.

If you like Carlyle, then you'll almost certainly like Macauley more. Carlyles style (like from his selected Essays) is, in my estimation, denser and more ponderous, while Macauleys is more artistic, erudite (he cites sources a lot more, with many interesting side notes) and frankly riveting at times. They knew each other, wrote each other and shared many friends. Carlyle didn't seem to much like Macauley, but they seem to have respected each others work, even if disagreeing, almost duelling artistically. Here is an excellent and interesting article on them, and their times. Don't take my word for it, you can read Macauleys History of England online, among many writings. It tends to get dismissed, as though one old very short book on 'whig' history is a definitive repudiation and nearly as varied in scope. He has a very classically elegant and clear prose style.

John Julius Norwich, though (by self-proclamation) not really seeking to write a rigorous academic work, does a great job at providing an overview of the entirety of Byzantine history in a fun, easily digestible way. I would recommend to people with any passing interest in Late Antique, Medieval, and Byzantine history to check out his three-volume BYZANTIUM series, or, if you're not feeling up to the task of leafing through over a thousand pages, pick up his Short History of Byzantium, which cuts the story down to a few hundred. You'll come out of it with a better understanding of the era, even if everything that is said is not said from a purely academic standpoint. I found it hard to put down.

I highly recommend The Thousand-Mile War by Brian Garfield. It's a thorough and entertaining book documenting the Aleutian Islands Campaign in Alaska during World War II and tells the story from the view of both the Americans and Japanese involved.

Garfield is a screenwriter by trade but the book is very historical at the same time so it gives a very entertaining and fun to read experience. Great book.

Oh, I have some! These three are not "history books" per se, but rather memoirs by people who had an interesting place in history. All are very literary and poetic, so these may be right up your alley:

• Seven Pillars of Wisdom by Col. T.E. Lawrence, re the Arab Revolt during WWI. Can be a challenge at times to follow the actual "plot" in terms of where exactly they are, why, and doing what exactly, but such an interesting writing style and some amazingly evocative imagery

• Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, re the early days of flight, plus a bit on the Spanish Civil War. Magical.

• similar in subject, time and style: West with the Night by Beryl Markham, re growing up in colonial Kenya & early bush flying

Also, similar-ish questions have come up before, so you may find something interesting amongst these threads.

• [Request] Looking for history books that 'read like fiction'.

• Any books that treat and teach histories as a narrative, much like a novel rather than a textbook? Or at least much more engaging than a catalog of facts and dates?

• What's the best historical non-fiction you've read?

Lastly, this question is definitely worth x-posting to /r/AskLiteraryStudies

I, for one, am highly impressed by Winston Churchill's use of the English language in his historical works. Churchill, in addition to being a statesman, was a highly able author. He takes a fair amount of influence from Gibbon's prose from what I've read: I haven't ever read Gibbon, but that's on my to-do list.

I always found Will Durant's books to have very good prose.

Churchill's history writing is fantastic, there's a reason he was awarded a nobel prize for literature. I would argue that the The World in Crisis is better than The Second World War but that may just be me.

The best non-fiction prose that I've encountered is Peter Green's Alexander of Macedon: A Historical Biography. It's beautifully written. The strength of the prose combined with the fascinating life of Alexander the Great make this a stellar read.

If you're at all into WWII naval combat in the Pacific, James D. Hornfischer's books Last Stand of The Tin Can Sailors and Neptune's Inferno are must haves. Heck the title alone on the first gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.

I've always been extremely fond of Barbara Tuchman. The Guns of August is especially worthwhile.

Robert Service's books on Russia and Communism are all written very well. I'm looking forward to reading his 'The end of the Cold War' this Easter.

A desert named peace by Benjamin Claude Brower

It has some of the most hauntingly beautiful prose of any academic book I've read. It focuses on violence in the Sahara in the early part of colonization. His writing complements the harsh landscape andv violent times he's describing.

Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom comes highly recommended; Platt does a great job of recreating the experience of the principle actors, since neither the reader nor that 'characters' know what's going to happen; he finds vivid details everywhere, makes lively portraits of historical figures long dead, and shifts between heartbreaking tragedy, dramatic irony, and pitch black comedy with remarkable skill. Highly recommended.

Barbara Tuchman's March of Folly, which should be required reading.