Birthing babies! I totally forgot. Yes, all you need is boiling water and clean linen. Just don’t drop the baby or spill water on it. Honestly, I don’t know why you need a license to do this stuff nowadays.
Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series tells you all you need to know about the late Republic period. No need to read any actual history after you’ve read these books.
The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers is a fairly accurate history of the lives of the romantic poets (e.g., Byron, Keats, Shelley) if you ignore the part about the psychic vampires.
Similarly, Power’s On Stranger Tides is a good historical account of pirates of the Caribbean. And The Anubis Gates is good for life in 19th century London.
Moby Dick is an excellent historical account of life on a whaling ship.
Everything I know about life in the Middle Ages I learned from The Doomsday Book.
Jesus, what a horrible, horrible book. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Nothing but death, black plague, incompetent bureacrats, death, more black plague, even more black plague, then throw in some more black plague. It’s like a fucking Monty Python sketch. “I’ll have the black plague, black plague, black plague, baked beans, black plague, sausage and spam.”
I can’t believe that I am the first to point this out, but that would have been Blackadder IV.
I learned much of what I know about 19[sup]th[/sup] century Russia from the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky.
I’ll also second the mention of I, Claudius for learning about Imperial Rome.
While I have studied it further I initially got most of my knowledge about the Napoleonic Era from books like Vanity Fair and The Count of Monte Cristo.
Oh, I love those books. She did 12 years of research before she started writing.
John Jakes’ *The Kent Family Chronicles * is rather fun…from just before the Revolutionary War to right before the turn of the 20th century. His North and South trilogy is good too, but I’ve found Jakes has a tendency to make his female characters either angels or sluts…no middle ground. And in his eight series Kent Family Chronicles…every single major female character gets raped. Every one.
James Clavell is excellent for history on Asia, from feudal Japan to 1960s Hong Kong.
For Greece during the “Heroic” age, see:
Mary Renault:
The King Must Die
Bull From the Sea
Robert Graves:
Hercules My Shipmate, or The Golden Fleece
I think you can learn most of modern UK history from plays about its royalty. Besides Shakespeare’s many plays – ** Henry IV** (in parts), Henry V, King John, etc.
But then you’ve got Anne of a Thousand Days, Becket, The Lion in Winter, a Man for All Seasons, Vivat, Vivat Regina (and a whole slew of movies about Elizabeth – Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots,, the Masterpiece Theater series Elizabeth R), the Masterpiece Theater Six Wives of Henry VIII.
You’ve got The Madness of George III and its film version, and The Queen
And if Moby Dick is too intimidating, there’s Batavia’s Graveyard by Mike Dash. It’s not about whaling, but about the Dutch East India Company and the spice trade, with a shipwreck and island survival.
I’ve learned from many books that bugs are okay to eat when you’re starving. I haven’t decided whether I’d eat them whole or mash them up and pretend they’re beans.
See Post #14. 
Oh, you noticed that, too, did you? Got very tiresome after a while.
I don’t know that I’ve learned any actual facts, but I feel like I’ve gotten a sense of the life and the time from Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael books. Also from Margaret Frazer’s Dame Frevisse mysteries, although those are a bit later.
And it’s not like there’s huge ton of Kent women either…I think it was maybe one per generation. But whether it was kidnapping and rape or date rape or gang rape, every one suffered the same fate.
This is great! Keep it coming folks.
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco is an interesting introduction to the medieval religious life. And a cracking good whodunnit too.
I need a new sig. Might I trouble you for this one?
Exuse me for a moment. I’ll be over here in the corner, quietly hanging myself.
Sure, go ahead.
Oh, one more. Harry Turtledove’s alternate history novel “The Guns of the South” is a great way to learn about the Civil War era, as long as you don’t count the pro-slavery time-traveling white South Africans.
I learned that, for many, Indira Ghandi’s ‘emergency’ term was a disaster from Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. Before reading that book, my knowledge of Indian life and politics between independence and and say about five years ago was pretty close to nil.
I learned a great deal about post-civil war Spain from the film El espiritu de la colmena. For that matter, I first learned about the Spanish Civil War at all from Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.
I learned about the French Revolution for the first time when I read A Tale of Two Cities in junior high school.
Going back even further, my first knowledge of WWII came from Raiders of the Lost Ark. I think that’s what got me interested in Archaeology, too. Man, was I disappointed when I found out that isn’t how it really works.
That book defeated me, but Morality Play by Barry Unsworth is an excellent portrayal of life ruled by the church in medieval times. The main characters are part of a traveling actors troupe (troop? troup?) so there’s good stuff about early theater as well.
I know a few people who consider themselves to be “religious”, but I doubt they have any idea of the importance of religion and the church to medieval folks. You go to church every Sunday? Try living every minute of your life as if the local priest was watching and judging and reporting you to the authorities if they didn’t like your attitude.
Nah, it’s black plague, black plague, influenza, black plague, influenza, and spam. But I love it anyway.
Frank Yerby wrote some great historical fiction. Judas, My Brother covers the events described in the New Testament. Goat Song is the story of Athens just after the war with Sparta, and Odor of Sanctity is about Medieval Europe.
James Michener’s historical novels were good for learning about the periods in which they were set. My favorite was Centennial.