When I was getting my degree in history I had to cite everything in my papers. I was wondering, why is it that books for the public don't tend to have bibliographies, footnotes, or end notes. I know that some do, but I've read books in the hundreds of pages and sometimes they will just have further readings if that.
Generally, I wouldn't consider a book a work of history if it isn't cited; citation and the consideration of historiography is such a key part of the historical method that anyone publishing a history book without one probably isn't a historian and thus probably doesn't fully understand or follow the historical method. So the answer is probably that it wasn't written by a historian.
(The one exception i would make to this rule is something published by a reputable academic press, such as Cambridge's Very Short Introduction series, since that is edited by academics and written by specialists in the relevant field)
Hi, you may be interested in this conversation from a couple of years ago, where /u/gent2012 points out that reference information may be omitted as a cost-saving measure
I would argue that this has a great deal to do with which press publishes the book. University presses tend to require back matter, such as bibliography and further reading lists, which demonstrates the rigour with which the book has been peer-reviewed. On the other hand, popular or trade presses do not always stipulate such requirements. There are many examples of books published by preeminent scholars in which no citations or bibliography can be found. Historians- and more so editors- sometimes justify omissions to improve readability or convey material to a non-academic audience.
You may also notice that some historians, who have already contributed greatly to specific genres of historical thinking throughout their careers, are able to publish books that require little evidence or substantiation. These tend to be senior historians, whose arguments are taken axiomatically.
It is worth mentioning that the inclusion of footnotes or bibliography does not always confirm the quality of a study, although it is an integral part of the historian's craft. Nonetheless, manuscript or archival sources can be manipulated and presented in specious ways that can mislead readers or result in fallacious argument. This can be demonstrated, for example, by contrasting Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners (1996) with that of Christopher Browings cogent research on the holocaust.