Well this seems to be an opinions and advice thingy so I'll add one: "The Great Courses" produce (whowould'vethunk) audio courses on loads of topics, a lot of it history, and the courses are always given by college professors of some relevance in their respective fields, albeit with an occasional blind spot for americentric interpretatins of history.

Despite their claims, it is not "college level education", but it is pretty close and is a great way to get into whatever topic may interest you.

I think the thing to consider is that if you'd like to be a "lay historian", you want to do one thing besides learn about history, which is to at the same time learn about historiography. That's the disadvantage of Great Courses, Crash Courses, and so on etc.: many of them tell you about the history of something and you can either hold that in memory or not depending on your own learning skills, but they often don't tell you about the state of historical knowledge on that subject--how historians came to know what they know, what the debates or disagreements among experts in that field might be, and so on.

Often those discussions are bruisingly technical or even seemingly trivial, especially with very early civilizations or cultures. You can't just leap into those conversations--most of them will concern archaeological research methods and standards, or in the case of the Akkadian Empire, the bruisingly difficult challenge of reading and interpreting cuneiform. But if you move up a level of specificity, you'll often find that the most recent layer of historical studies of the Akkadian Empire are being shaped by broader trends in historical methods and thought--environmental history, comparative history of empires, machine learning and text mining approaches to cuneiform interpretation, revisitation of recurrent arguments about whether empires ever really "collapse", and so on.

Ideally to learn about history--to really feel like a "lay historian"--you want to develop an appreciation for how the current synthesis understanding of any given period or place has developed. Not too deeply, not too obsessively, if the goal is to 'graze' over a wide span of historical knowledge. In many fields, you'll be lucky and there will be a historian who has written a synthesis account of an important subject matter that includes attention to the historiography, rather than trying to piece it together yourself.

I second Great Courses. If you have an Audible subscription, they've just added a ton of courses to it. You're getting a whole class for free.

Alternatively, many college professors put their lectures on Youtube. There is one on Ukraine and its history currently by Yale. You can find their courses here: https://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses

There is a r/Mesopotamia sub that may be really helpful on more specific texts there. I found the usual Grammar of Akkadian to be really dense without an instructor, so if you're looking for a language book that is more suited for the layperson, I'd suggest: Complete Babylonian by Martin Worthington.

Coursera also offers some courses in history. I took a fantastic one about witchcraft through the University of Barcelona. You pay if you would like a certificate, but otherwise it's completely free.

My last suggestion would be to look up the syllabus of any course you would be interested in taking at a university. Get the textbook and follow along as if you were taking the course!

As u/LegalAction said, being a historian involves quite a bit of own research. But I wouldn't say that you have to be a full-fledged historian to appreciate and learn history. Not everyone needs to be able to push the boundaries of our knowledge of history just like a say a biker does not need to be able to make their own motorcycle from scratch.

I would say that nowadays the barrier for entry into "history as a hobby" is pretty low and there are multiple sources in English and other languages that help readers understand the topic enough to form some educated opinion. It is certainly not enough for some academic study, but it is knowledge nonetheless, and I think that's more in line with what you might expect from us.

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So, now the question is "What authors, books and other sources should I seek out?". Besides the names that LegalAction named, I'd definitely recommend these sources on r/AskHistorians such as the Booklist or links. They are curated lists with great reads into a variety of topics so feel free to take a look to see if something interests you.

If you don't find what you are looking for you could also try searching for what interests you on r/AskHistorians itself, either by searching posts with questions related to what you'd like to learn or you may want to look through Flaired Users and once you find a user with a flair related to a topic you like, you can look through their comment history to see if they said something about your topic.

Of course not everything has been, and might never be answered unless you ask that question. If you don't find your answer on our subreddit feel free to ask us, keep in mind writing responses takes time, but they are certainly worth it. Besides the answer itself, you will usually also get a list of sources, which you might then study further.

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Apart from r/AskHistorians, at least on YouTube I would recommend OSP (Overly Sarcastic Productions), it is a duo of Blue (mostly history focused) and Red (mostly literary focused), their videos are quite enjoyable, well made and specialise on making history more accessible to a general audience without leaving out the necessary details.

Historia Civilis is another channel like this.

On a completely different end is Bernadette Banner who solely makes videos about the history of fashion, they are however very entertaining and one of the few channels who meticulously source almost everything.

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Besides what I have said already, it is generally a good practice to look for people or groups that provide sources. Not only does it make their work more transparent and easier to check, but it also helps you, the reader/viewer if you decide to delve into the topic a bit more. Another thing to look for is consistency, not an upload schedule or book releases, but if the author generally stays within their field of study. If, say, someone goes from a London Blitz to pre-columbian archeology, it is more likely than not that they do not have sufficient knowledge of one or the other topic, unless of course they invite experts to explain the topics themselves.

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For the last thing, I'd say that at the moment it might be tempting to try to learn as much as you can about as many topics as possible. That is certainly a goal, but not very achievable, at least not to a degree beyond knowing handful of trivia. Human history spans more than 10 000 years and most of Earth's surface, it is pretty much impossible to know everything there is to know about history. It is possible to know a lot about a specific part of history, which I would maybe recommend once you familiarise yourself with some broad strokes of history and perhaps find something that interests you more than other topics.

The Open University in the UK has a resource called Open learn which does free short courses in history and other related disciplines like politics, religion, art etc. Obviously they’re trying to persuade you to pay to do a full degree, but the material is excellent and from past degree level courses, both at introductory and more advanced. It gives a good idea of university study.

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses/full-catalogue

Many colleges and universities have the ability to “audit” a class, usually with the professors permission. Not sure the state of practice after Covid, but if you have a specific area of interest that you would like more instruction and discussion, this may be an an option. Also, some schools waive any fees for seniors(65+), veterans, disabilities…

Any current Professors could possibly comment if they have more insight in regard to their own state and or college and university procedures for this option.

I'm studying History at university right now, started my first semester this September. We are using (among other books of course) A History of World Societies by McKay. I personally think it's a great book to learn the general aspects of world society, starting at the Stone Age and forward. But remember that it's only one perspective on a massive portion of history and it might be biased - like most things have a bias. But to learn the general outlines, it's a great book

Hi,

Before you jump into reading history, you should understand what history actually is. I know this sounds silly, but history is not just a set of facts.

History is a narrative established by a set of facts. It gives meaning and purpose to those facts. Therefore, history is less fact and more "fact-based opinion."

It's why a lot of history majors become lawyers. Lawyers read the facts of the case, and create the best narrative possible for their client based on law.

I have not read this book, but the synopsis seems to cover what I am talking about.

https://www.amazon.com/Historiography-introduction-Roger-Spalding/dp/0719072859

Edit: Beyond that, if you would like to tell me what you are interested in I may be able to recommened you some good books.

Another thing worth mentioning is that studying Ancient History is different than modern history. A comparatively limited amount of written sources for much (though not all) of Ancient history, and the somewhat untrustworthy work of many ancient historians make the study of ancient history more the study of archaeology.

Modern history is where you get documentation that can present a somewhat unbroken chain of facts which can be converted into a tidy narrative.

I suggest reading books that engage your imagination or connect with other interests you might have ~ dont just force dry information in or else you are very likely to forget it. This comes from someone who is a chronic amnesiac trying constantly to keep history and modernity in order. I just read a VERY engaging history of Native America's contributions to politics, global economy, medicine, and urban planning by Jack Weatherford called "Indian Givers." He has several other books, including the contributions of the Mongols.

One resource I enjoy is the In Our Time podcast by the BBC. They cover a different historical topic every week, and bring in professors with relevant focuses to have a seminar-style discussion. The episodes aren't laid out in chronological order, but they cover a wide range, so you should be able to find something about whichever time period you're covering.

Furthermore, Carthage must be destroyed.

You may want to start looking at your local public libraries databases and start reading journals for more in depth information, especially public history, oral history, and historiography journals. America: History and Life through EBSCO, Historical Abstracts, jstor, and Dissertations and Theses in ProQuest are a really good place to start,

Do you have nearby museums? These are also great to hop into history and see it first hand through artefacts :)

Even when not joining classes at a college, you can still check the classes they offer.

The first classes are usually mandatory for all. Read all books that are on those reading lists.

You will slowly figure out which parts of history you like. Which area's, times and approaches.

Then check out which classes are offered on those subjects and again check out the reading lists.

I don't know what a "lay historian" is exactly. We aren't clergy.

Doing real history is using documents to describe the past, and that means learning languages.

If you can't do the languages, you're doing trivia.

If Akkadian is your thing, you need to pick up a course in Akkadian.

As for general theory, we read Hobsbawm, Bloch, Gramsci, Marx, Saussure, Derrida, and so forth.

You don't have to buy their ideas. I think Derrida was outright insane. But you need to know their frame, so to speak.

One interesting point in that list of authors is Bloch died, executed by the Germans for fighting in the French resistance, and Gramsci died in prison, as far as I can tell, for being communist.

This is one of my problems with the 20 year rule. History is a political activity, and historians have died for being historians politically active in their own times.

It's kinda the point of Orwell's 1984. Who controls the past controls the present, etc.