I have a fair passion for history, hours spent watching channels like Historia Civilis, KaG etc, but kinda realised after looking at previous posts that watching YT videos which are made for entertainment may not be the best for accuracy
So I want to start getting into reading books the two I wanted to start with being Rubicon by Tom Holland and The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan (These are the two non picture only or horrible history books in our school library and also don’t really know much about books tbh)
After seeing what people thought about Tom Holland im starting to have second thoughts but nothing about Donald Kagan, so any opinions?
Also any book reccomendations would be appreciated :)
Donald Kagan was actually the grad school advisor of the professor who was my grad school advisor. That is to say, he's a legitimate historian whose work is sound. Said work is a bit on the venerable side (his 2004 Peloponnesian War is a condensed and more accessible version of his four volume history of the Peloponnesian War, which he began in 1969) but I don't think it matters if you're just getting into the topic. Indeed, it might be a good starting point if you ever decided to read other authors on the same subject.
I don't know if they're still up, but years ago Yale had all the lectures from the Intro to Ancient Greece course Kagan taught there up on YouTube, might be worth a look if you're interested.