I enjoy reading books that dig into details, but I find that I lack a basic framework to truly understand tough material. I lack higher education, so even pointing me in the right direction will help me out a ton. Thanks in advance!
Is there a particular country, era, topic, or region that you're interested in?
As a general proposition maybe something like Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order and Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Present Day, but these are, as they say on the tin, attempting to generalize human politics and are really more political or social science than history (though they certainly include a lot of history.)