Since I'm the one who precipitated the thread, I guess I'd better throw down the gauntlet first.

How bad is pop history? Bad, or literally Hitler?

The majority of pop history is bad, and the majority of it is literally Hitler! :P Seriously though, most of the genre is pretty awful and, like /u/LegalAction pointed out in the thread which inspired this, much of it has its roots in trying to push a particular, modern-day, political agenda.

is bad pop history salvageable as a means of raising interest in a topic without doing to much damage to real historical discussion? Can historical fiction fill the same need?

I actually think that the first question here is a bit of a red herring. It doesn't matter whether we (academic and academically-minded historians) think that pop history can be read without doing damage to 'real' history. The fact is that it is being read, in far greater numbers than academic history writing and that it is damaging the wider historical consciousness. Academic historians (in my experience at least) look down their noses at pop history and at those who write it, make snarky remarks and, at best, ignore it.

This attitude is, I think, completely irresponsible, as it leaves the curious amateur with nowhere to turn but to the purveyors of bad pop history. Popular history books are the main way, and in many cases the only way, that an interested layperson, who hasn't studied history beyond a high school level, can develop their interests cheaply and easily. Rather than poo-poo someone for wanting to expand their knowledge without wading through expensive academic works or decontextualised original sources, they should grab the bull by the horns and start writing good, intellectually solid, yet still accessible history (I mean, it's so simple, why havn't they thought of it before! /s). Until that happens, and I'm sure it'll take a while, I would stand by my opinion that recommending the better pop history books, with appropriate caveats, to general readers is better than losing them altogether or driving them into the worst of the pop history industry with no guidance.

If you think of the study of history as sex (because it's that much fun!), and academic history as sex within a marriage (lots of fun, but hard work sometimes and needs serious commitment), then I would advocate giving the kids condoms and letting them explore (pop history with caveats) rather than trying to enforce abstinence.

Historical fiction doesn't fulfill the same need, I don't think: I think most of us are drawn to history in an effort to better understand the past. Historical fiction gives us a flavour, but doesn't aim at all to provide understanding. Even the worst of pop history aims to give some sort of understanding. So in our sex metaphor, historical fiction would be pornography - superficially similar to the real thing, but different entirely in its results and, in the end, no substitute at all for the real thing.

The main point I want to stress though, which is slightly outside the scope of the question, is that I think we, as academically-minded historians, have a duty to reach out and to write better popular history than is currently produced. This sub does a great job of this on a smaller scale, but academic history as a profession is, on the whole, closing its eyes and sticking its fingers in its ears regarding the problem.

A couple of years back (2014) a book was published by the Yale University press, entitled 1940: FDR, Wilkie, Lindbergh, Hitler - the Election amid the Storm written by Susan Dunn, which had the look and feel of a pop history book but was released by an accredited publisher, giving it the authority of an academic publication. While the book had its moments of good history, it was mostly a "Desperate Housewives of Washington" sort of narrative. It wasn't necessary nonfactual, but it had told a narrative of the 1940 election that distracted from more serious discussions of FDR and US involvement in the Second World War, something that Waldo Heinrichs' Threshold of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II focuses on, but was not nearly as popular.

Is Susan Dunn's pop history more damaging than clearly counter-factual pop histories to academic history? Is it just as misleading, just to a different audience? Can half pop histories/ half academic histories work, or are the audiences too distant from each other? Can they produce a better product, or are they just half as good at either objective?

I tend to compare this in my mind to a work of historical fiction written by Chinese author Ha Jin, entitled War Trash. It reads as a memoir about a Chinese soldier fighting in the Korean War. I tend to think it does a better job explaining themes, trends, feelings, the atmosphere, etc. about the Korean War from a Chinese perspective better than Dunn's book does about 1940. Possibly because I was lead to believe that it was an autobiography by my supervisor, before he revealed to me that it was a fictional account after I was finished reading it, but it certainly felt more real, even now.

Can historical fiction capture the essence of a period better than pop history can? Is there value for the discipline in that, or does it dampen writing history?

Thanks for any responses, interested to hear what you guys have to say.

I actually work in a bookstore. Yes, a real live bookstore with a History section.

My experience is that if you are trained as a historian and can identify what is crappy relatively quickly, what is available isn't that bad. I usually read popular works written by academics or enthusiasts writing for a non-academic, but interested, audience.

But I read critically, like a historian. I've read enough to identify issues with the way a history is written without discarding a book entirely. In my field, the history of science, there is often direct antagonism between academic and non-academic authors. I get a kick out of the inevitable defensive introductions of non-academic authors who often write something like, "I know I'm going to get into trouble for this approach but..." These people tend to be expert non-historians of technology*, for example, scientists or someone who has spent their life collecting tractors. While I find these people sometimes do occasionally slip into an overly 'science is awesome and always progressive' type viewpoint, I think their work is valuable provided it is not taken as read and is viewed critically. Sometimes, this even stretches into authors who write about various topics (not scientists/enthusiasts) who have clearly done intensive research about a specific area.

Truly problematic history of science tends to be by people who are neither historians of science, scientists or (usually technology) enthusiasts, and choose to write a book on something very big and splashy. I suspect this is true of all pop history: books by non-historians on Darwin, Galileo, Newton and splashy topics like astronomy, space travel, and scientific revolutions have the same issues as the inevitable book about Hitler or war. They are wading into a very full field with a lot of cultural baggage and they tend to be under-researched and ignorant of high quality literature about the field.

However, in the History of Science, I would state that you are far, far, far better off reading a popular history book about a scientists than historical fiction about a scientist. Fiction about (real) scientists/science or inventors/inventions is almost always the historian of science's worst dual nightmare: celebratory and teleological. Movies and fictional TV shows about scientists are the worst :E, but that's probably true of every field.

...they should grab the bull by the horns and start writing good, intellectually solid, yet still accessible history.

In my field, there are books that are written by historians that are popularly available at bookstore prices. However, I wouldn't necessarily paint them as better as introduction in general. A historian's theory in popular book form is not necessarily a good introduction to an inexperienced reader. Reading a strongly argued historian-written book in isolation (as opposed to, like a historian, as part of a much broader reading list) is just as misleading than reading a strongly argued but likely non-historian-written book, which is probably at least more introductory in tone.