Well-written histories?

gaiscioch

Would anybody have recommendations for well-written history books or articles? I'd like to show students examples of a historian who can build and develop an argument in a structured, lucid and compelling style.

Manach

History writing favourites are fairly subject, with personal tastes playing a measure. So the following can be taken with a pinch of salt of who I like as historical writers based on their style and mode of expression.
Classicial - There is the dry dusty voice of Thucycides and the modern works by Victor Davis Hanson for instance is "Western Way of War". Other authors which show flair but perphaps at times sacrifice substance would be Belloc or Churchill. For a defence of History in general and general theory of the subject there are the works of EC Carr and his "What is history" and finally there historical fiction with the authors Patrick O'Brian and Elizabeth Chadwick

pedroeibar1

Surely the matter of first importance would be the ages of the students? Too many historians write dry prose so the wrong book at the wrong age could put someone off for life.
On a recent thread we were discussing navigation – Dava Sobel’s book on “The Search for Longitude” is a good read and describes the history of exploration, a technical subject and a historical sequence simply and very well.
John Steel Gordon’s book “An Empire of Wealth” is a great read on the growth of the US, what was happening in Britain/US and is an economic history that is fascinating and explained in a basic and very readable way).
Works by Antonia Fraser are also very readable but can be a bit lengthy for younger readers.
Books by Stella Tillyard always are accurate and enjoyable.
Anything by Antony Beevor – D-Day is very good.
Chickenhawk is a very good biog on the Vietnam War.
As mentioned by Manach, Patrick O’Brian’s novels are great. They are historically accurate in describing life in the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic era and written in classic English prose, so the reader gets both history and a lesson in style. Mary Renault is another historical novelist well worth reading.
I’ve no idea how history is taught today, but what was totally absent in my time (history up to InterCert) was connectivity. There never was a “bigger picture” and modules were drummed into us with no reference to context, so I ended up with no real idea as to “why” and just had the “where” and “when”. What I’ve learned since has been to explore the bigger picture.

dubhthach

I always enjoyed Len Deighton's various works on the second world war.

• Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain (1977)
• Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk (1979)
• Blood, Tears, and Folly: An Objective Look at World War ll (1993)

Enjoyed Beevor's book on Crete, Tom Holland's is good as well particularly as an introduction to classical history, for example:

• Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic
• Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West

In general these days I tend to read more academic texts which can be a challenge if ye not taking notes (or aren't hugely engaged in topic). For example at the moment I'm reading "IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems" (MIT Press), which wouldn't be of interest of anyone sane outside of IT industry

pedroeibar1

"Bomber" by Deighton is also an excellent read, really describes the horrors of firestorms. While we are on flying, I once gave Forsythe's "The Good Shepherd" to a former Vampire (Air Corps) flyer and despite our late night session he opened it when he got home and stayed up all night to read it in one sitting; every time we met he mentioned it.

Paddy Leigh Fermor also is a good read on wartime Crete.

IBM 360:eek: that's even before my time! I built a business on the back of the IBM AS400, which came about 20 years later.:)

dubhthach

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

"Bomber" by Deighton is also an excellent read, really describes the horrors of firestorms. While we are on flying, I once gave Forsythe's "The Good Shepherd" to a former Vampire (Air Corps) flyer and despite our late night session he opened it when he got home and stayed up all night to read it in one sitting; every time we met he mentioned it.

Paddy Leigh Fermor also is a good read on wartime Crete.

IBM 360:eek: that's even before my time! I built a business on the back of the IBM AS400, which came about 20 years later.:)

Sure though first 100 pages are as much about IBM shift from mechanical calculators to electronic computers in early 50's (along with management structure, relationships between Watson Snr and Junior etc.) right up to kicking off the project that gave rise to 360 (which is still with us today, new Z13 mainframe just announced is linear descendant). Key bits about development of IBM lab infrastructure, development of first hard disk, innovations in memory etc. (Basically most of architecture stuff we take for granted in modern CPU's was often first fielded in 360 line -- backward compatability, cpu cache for example etc.)

Manach

Excellent : we techies have secured a beachhead on the History Forum.
IBMs dark secret, its songs : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9oh3gqOEKU

kildarejohn

Any ideas for good history writers (as per op's criteria) in Irish History in particular? Many Irish writers tend to be very partisan and lacking in analysis of both sides of the story.

pedroeibar1

kildarejohn wrote: »

Any ideas for good history writers (as per op's criteria) in Irish History in particular? Many Irish writers tend to be very partisan and lacking in analysis of both sides of the story.

Without wishing to be difficult, I think that is the wrong question.;) You need to pick a topic and then look for a couple of good books on it, rather than an author.

A successful writer produces more than one book and not all can be of the same standard. Coogan on the IRA is better than his biased and inaccurate writing on the Famine. Peter Hart did good work but in some works his assertions are ‘off’ and untenable. Hobsbawm is a great historian but his Marxist ‘leaning’ grates, unless you have a very Left-wing perspective.

Max Hastings has a well-written review of “Gallipoli” by Peter Fitzsimons in the last issue of the Sunday Times. He starts by writing “Recently I met an Australian historian involved in organizing his country’s centenary commemoration of the 1915 Dardanelles Campaign. ‘I have a problem,’ [he told me]. ‘Almost everything Australians believe about the First World War is untrue.’ Hastings goes on to describe facts and Australian disbelief that that nearly twice as many British died as Anzacs, resentment at the presence of British representatives at Australian ceremonies, etc. and comments on the author ‘…..deploying an arsenal of typefaces, clichés and purple prose’ before covering other books by him and finishes by writing ‘This book has little to offer British readers; nobody is likely to improve on Alan Moorehead’s magnificent 1956 account. But FitzSimons serves up the story just how Australians like to taste it, and it will sell thousands to them for the centenary.’

We’ve seen something similar on this forum, for example on the Famine and Cromwell, - should you take an approach that differs to the conventional nationalist one, the gobdaws come out of the woodwork screaming ‘revisionist’, ‘Unionist’ and ‘West Brit’ and trot out guff that has no basis in historical fact but it is beyond their comprehension to open a book to check it out.

As I’ve mentioned Cromwell, the book "To Hell or Connaught" - Peter Beresford-Ellis is IMO a good read, factual but possibly too detailed – he sources a lot from Prendergast’s “The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland"

dubhthach

Revisionism had it's place particularly useful the research done on stuff like "state/legal reform etc."but it's not beyond criticism in it's own right.

One of more interesting recent books I've read with regards to whole 16th/17th century is:

Age if Atrocity: Violence and political conflict in early modern Ireland

Which is made up of 13 essays by various Authors, looking at violence in both directions (for example an essay on the murders of Aodh Ó Néill eg. political murders etc carried out on his behest )

9 quid for paperback ain't bad value:
http://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/new-year-folder-2/age-of-atrocity/

The essays been:

1. Early Modern Ireland: a history of violence -- Clodagh Tait, Davide Edwards & Pádraig Lenihan
2. The escalation of violence in sixteenth-century Ireland - David Edwards
3. Atrocity and history: Grey, Spenser and the slaughter at Smerwick (1580) - Vincent P. Carey
4. 'Slán Dé fút go hoíche': Hugh O'Neill's murders - Hiram Morgan
5. The pacification of Ulster, 1600-3 - John McGurk
6. 'The just vengence of God': reporting the violent deaths of persecutors in early modern Ireland - Clodagh Tait
7. Religious violcen against settlers in south Ulster, 1641-2 -- Brian Mac Cuarta
8. The other massacre: English killings of Irish, 1641-3 -- Kenneth Nicholls
9. Archaelogy of massacre: the Carrickmines mass grave and the siege of March 1642 -- Mark Clinton, Linda Fibiger & Damian Shiels
10. Inventing an Irish Protestant icon: the strange death of Sir Charles Coote, 1642 -- Kevin Forkan
11. 'Escaping massacre': refugees in Scotland in the aftermath of the 1641 Ulster Rebellion -- John R. Young
12. The Drogheda masacre in Cromwellian context -- John Morrill
13. Propaganda, rumour and myth: Oliver Cromwell and the massacre at Drogheda -- Micheál Ó Siochrú
14. The laws of war in seventeenth-century Europe and their application during the Jacobite War in Ireland, 1688-81 -- John Childs

pedroeibar1

dubhthach wrote: »

Revisionism had it's place particularly useful the research done on stuff like "state/legal reform etc."but it's not beyond criticism in it's own right.

One of more interesting recent books I've read with regards to whole 16th/17th century is:

Age if Atrocity: Violence and political conflict in early modern Ireland

Which is made up of 13 essays by various Authors, looking at violence in both directions (for example an essay on the murders of Aodh Ó Néill eg. political murders etc carried out on his behest )

I’ve no issues with any event being pulled apart and analysed critically - nothing should be beyond fair analysis / criticism and everything should be ‘up there’ for factual (re)evaluation . The issue IMO with the term ‘revisionism’ is the word itself, rather than the concept of educated reassessment.
Using Aodh O’Neil (example from your post above), he is generally held up as a paragon and when I took a slightly contrarian view in writing

Much of the death & depredation was a direct cause of the revolt by O’Neill, who I suggest was more into self-aggrandisement that looking for a “Catholic” independent Ireland. His army had to live off the land, hence the scorched earth policy of Mountjoy, who was supplied from England. The state of the country & people shocked even a battle-hardened Fynes Morryson. And much of that famine happened long after Kinsale when O'Neill had no hope of winning anything.

it immediately was followed by a question from another

“Pedro are you from the UK?”

And then by

“…..the only people I've come across before that constantly tried to twist Irish history in such a manner, were extremist Ulster Unionists!”

I not singling out a couple of particular quotes, I’m using them as an example of the general trend in the type of comment one expects when a different view is put forward. The word “revisionism” has now a changed meaning, rather like the words “gay”, “straight” and “high” and anyone querying information heretofore accepted as dogma is open to screams of negative abuse and name calling as a “revisionist”. Perhaps history needs a new, more neutral word for what should (could?) be called ‘reappraisal’? (Not of course that it would shut up the ranters!)
I’ve ordered the book by the way. Thanks.

kildarejohn

I find it strange that in the field of History producing revised versions of theories is described by the negative word "revisionism".
This is not the case in other fields of study;
In Science, producing revised theories is described as "exciting new ground-breaking research"
In Business, we talk about the importance of "innovation", "managing change", "re-engineering the corporation" etc.

dubhthach

kildarejohn wrote: »

I find it strange that in the field of History producing revised versions of theories is described by the negative word "revisionism".
This is not the case in other fields of study;
In Science, producing revised theories is described as "exciting new ground-breaking research"
In Business, we talk about the importance of "innovation", "managing change", "re-engineering the corporation" etc.

Well you also get "exciting new ground breaking research" in history, it just tends to take about 20-30 years to publish

"Revisionism" in sense has a quite a narrow definition when it comes to Irish history. Personally I see it and "romantic nationalism history" as been two sides of same coin. The extremes on both ends are unpalatable and often blantaly unhistorical.

One reason I tend to like collections of essays, they might seem bit dry and academic but at least ye aren't dealing with the "ego of one historian" who often has a media persona to boot. Also they tend to have very high emphasis on sources (1/3rd page can be end-notes )