A good way to start getting a smattering about ancient European history is to read Asterix comic books. It’s surprising how the authors managed to mix in many real factoids about the Romans’ occupation of Gaul with the anachronisms, puns and low humor. An added bonus is that you’ll laugh your ass off, too.
We read that one in english class - you’re right, It’s exelent (BTW, the first hundres pages of Name of the Rose are, according to rumour, designed to chase people away - the rest is fircely interesting.)
Good Og, I grew up with these and didn’t even think to mention them. Good call, teela brown.
Well you could argue that it’s symbolic, since American history is about the rape of a continent. 
I’d add Declare to that, as an excellent biography on the life of the British traitor Kim Philby.
Plus a bunch of djinnis.
About all I know of English history comes from Philippa Gregory. One thing I’ve learned from the covers is that women had no heads. I’m sure the rest of my knowledge is just as accurate. 
One I read as a kid which I absorbed a lot of detail of everyday life from was Shield of Three Lions by Pamela Kaufman. I take the history with a grain of salt, but the details about food, dress and behavior are probably pretty accurate.
And while I know it’s complete conjecture, I have to admit that I think of the stories in The Earth’s Children series whenever I see neolithic art, especially the Venus of Predmosti. To me, it IS Ayla, no matter what it might “really” be.
I recently read The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin, a very good mystery set in Istanbul in the 1830’s. Chock full of good stuff as the author has previously written critically acclaimed non-fiction works about the period. I’m hoping to find some of them but they are missing off the library shelves. I knew nothing about the place and little about the history until I read it.
I love that book. I come away from it with the idea that the South, their societal structure and slavery was all just a house of cards, and Sherman came and not only knocked it down but burned it to the ground. Slaves weren’t stupid, they were totally uneducated and acted the way they did because it was in their best interest. If you were beaten everytime you looked crossly at a white person, I imagine you’d learn to put on a happy face, too.
I’m glad to see the Tim Powers novels mentioned! The trilogy with Earthquake Weather also has a lot of random historical information.
I watched the movie Braveheart, liked it, but wondered about its rather ballsy claim that William Wallace sired future kings of England–not to mention the rather bizarre image of a Scot in that era painting his face blue.
So I looked it up. Turns out Wallace was dead before Isabella of France even came to Britain, & he was a Lowlander (so no kilt), &… whatever. I would know even less than I do if not for Randall Wallace’s blatantly ahistorical script.
Much (though far from all) of what I know–no, think–about ancient Rome I learned from the Marcus Didius Falco mysteries & Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
(E.g., “all Roman men are named for their fathers,”–& half of them are named Marcus–from the one, & the love of republicanism betrayed by the dictator’s cult [of personality, though later just plain cult] from the other.)
And I have to get in a plug for Nicol & Whalley’s Russia, Anyone?–not fiction, but a book of jokes from Russian history, with just enough of a history of Russia to get the jokes in. (“Russia is older than believed, but not near as old as she looks.”) I read it as a child, & you know, it’s pretty thin information compared to a college course, but a lot of it is accurate–because the jokes are all based in real history. (“Better lit than Neva!”)
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the graphic novel, not the craptacular movie,) taught me all I need to know about Victorian England.
Judith Merkle Riley–
A Vision of Light and * Pursuit of the Green Lion* for 14th century England.
The Master of All Desires for Catherine di Medici, mid 16th century French occultists and Nostradamus.
The Serpent Garden, Renaissance England and France.
The Oracle Glass, 17th century Paris, Louis XIV and de Montespan.
All Riley’s books feature humor, strong female characters and a metric buttload of historical research, and usually some sort of supernatural creature or something like to spice things up. I love her books.
Kage Baker’s “Company” series. If you haven’t read them, you should.
Mary Stewart’s Merlin/Arthur series for post-Roman Britain.
You guys need to go play more games. The Civilization and Age of Empires series both have little snippets of history sprinkled liberally through them. I hear the various Total War games do also, but I haven’t played those. There’s also a plethora of WWII games; I learned a lot about the Battle of Britain from the old LucasArts game of that name. D&D and the World of Darkness games have some historical information, although it is to be taken with buckets of salt as it is heavily modified to suit the setting.
Yeah, I didn’t read much fiction when growing up, but one of the few I did read, and loved, was Calico Palace by Gwen Bristow. It taught me what it was like to live through the California Gold Rush and the wild and wooly post-Gold Rush days of San Francisco’s growing pains. From that I discovered I liked fiction if it taught me about history. I LOVE THIS THREAD!
As an adolescent, my first realization that Native Americans were harshly and unfairly treated, and that Custer was a horrible bastard from Little Big Man. I saw the movie with my mom, and then HAD to read the book.
Dee Brown wrote an excellent book on the demise of the indians (as in natie americans, not the other ones) called “Bury my heart at Wounded Knee”.
Since you are in the same country as me, I think you still can buy “Sølvpilen” at the kiosk
Also, Valerio Massimo Manfredi has written lots on ancient greeks, and a trilogy on Alexander the great.
And last but not least, the cartoon series about Prince Valiant.
Sure I can:-)
This one is great. Though I never quite understood how Valiant was able to walk from Greenland to Brittain… :o
I learnt about
Hadrian’s Wall in Hadrian’s Wall,
Atilla the Hun in The Scourge of God and
Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in Napoleon’s Pyramids - all by William Deitrich
Oh, and pre-WW2 Nazi adventurism in Antarctica in Ice Reich! (His first novel)
I’ve read a lot of historical fiction and I sometiems have a hard time separating stuff I learned about history from ‘legit’ sources from what I learned from novels.
One author who particularly stands out is Gwen Bristow, who wrote historical fiction from the late 1930s through the '70s. She wrote a big old trilogy about the South which I’ve read a few times, but what I really loved were her two books about California history. Jubilee Trail about Southern California, and Calico Palace about San Francisco and the gold rush. I am a native Californian, so pretty well-steeped in California history (we learn it in school), but tons of what I ‘know’ about California I learned from those two books.
Bristow also wrote a Revolutionary War book (Celia Garth) which I also liked very much.
I opened this tread to mention For Whom the Bell Tolls, but I see dawvee beat me to it. Let’s see:
I got to know Benjamin Franklin in The Last Witchfinder.
A Day of Wonders had merry heaps of Black Death and Spam.
I learned all about Craiglockhart Hospital (for treating shell shocked officers during the First World War) from Regeneration.
The bombing of Dresden from Slaughterhouse-Five
The penal colony on Tasmania (Van Diemen’s Land) and the destruction of the native culture from English Passengers.
Australia in the late 1800s from True History of the Kelly Gang.
I probably wouldn’t know anything at all about Botswana if I hadn’t read the Ladies #1 Detective Agency books.
Great thread!
I’m surprised nobody had yet mentioned the 1632 series of books by Eric Flint. They taught me a lot about 17th century Europe.
Kotick writes:
This is true, but I have to point out that Brown’s book wasn’t fiction at all, and therefore doesn’t really fit the theme of this thread. It’s history, and pretty well-written. I read it when it first came out.