How would you define "balanced"?

Books that immediately spring to mind:

• Insurgent Empire by Priyamvada Ghopal. She's a Cambridge scholar and this academic book is heavy on accurate historical references.
• The Patient Assassin by Anita Anand. She's a British Indian journalist married to a scientist. Evidence based true historical book but written like a novel. It's really compelling.
• Empire by Jeremy Paxman. A white British journalist who started out as a fan of the British Empire and went out to former colonies to interview people about their memories. At the end of it, he still recognises some of the good things Britain brought to those countries but has a much wider awareness of the costs.
• An Utterly Impartial History of Britain by John O'Farrell. Kind of a comedy book but really interesting nonetheless. After reading several serious and harrowing books you might enjoy something a bit lighter like this.

Hi there anyone interested in recommending things to OP! While you might have a title to share, this is still a thread on /r/AskHistorians, and we still want the replies here to be to an /r/AskHistorians standard - presumably, OP would have asked at /r/history or /r/askreddit if they wanted a non-specialist opinion. So give us some indication why the thing you're recommending is valuable, trustworthy, or applicable! Posts that provide no context for why you're recommending a particular podcast/book/novel/documentary/etc, and which aren't backed up by a historian-level knowledge on the accuracy and stance of the piece, will be removed.