# What are some of your favorite history books?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Tags:** books-writing-myths\
**Created:** [March 23, 2024, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255 "2024-03-23T18:39:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 5

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**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2024, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/81 "2024-04-02T21:37:52Z")

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> [@Lumpy](#):
>
> Gunpowder may have been invented in the East but the Portuguese were the pioneers in putting cannon on ships, something Islamic, Indian and Chinese peoples were fatally behind in doing. Paul Kennedy in _The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers_ argues that what Europe had going for it was a pluralistic culture where innovation could find a place; it was less hampered by stagnant political, religious and cultural models that valued upholding the status quo.
> 
> Re. “germs” it’s notable that the classic era of colonialism in Africa didn’t take off until after the discovery of quinine. Before that Europeans mainly occupied coastline ports and only as far upriver as the first cataracts or waterfalls.

Definitely. Just other pieces of the puzzle. Similarly, if you wanted to describe to an alien how a few small nations in a global backwater suddenly exported violence on a massive scale to the extent they divided the entire world between them starting with only a 20 year tech head start and yet still maintain this hegemony/dominance today the above two paragraphs aren’t going to do it.

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**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2024, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-your-favorite-history-books/999255/82 "2024-05-26T18:20:30Z")

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> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#):
>
> You can make your own decisions about the book’s worth as a readable novel, but please don’t base your understanding of history on it.

That’s a delicious irony, as far as I’m concerned. While much history, both good and bad, becomes unreadable with time, good novels usually stay that way, and this one certainly does.

Tey almost could have set the book a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, and argued some minutia of a completely fictitious history, and written a book just as readable. I don’t think Richard III is even mentioned until chapter 3, but it goes along quite nicely up until then. In fact, her superpower as a mystery writer was not even to mention the crime in the first chapter, and still snag the reader, so her book remains readable while sober history on both sides of the equation becomes dated.

Nonetheless, it remains correct on the basic facts-- Richard did die at Bosworth in 1485; the princes did disappear, and no one quite knows what happened; the origin of the story most people know comes from a document found among Thomas More’s papers, and his reputation lent it credence. Anyone looking for ground-level entrance with easy access could do worse.

And thus, Truth is the daughter of Time.

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