
Ask HN: How would you go about learning history? - jreynolds999
Hello HN!<p>As a way to improve my inferential capacity, I decided a couple of years ago to make an honest attempt to learn as much as I could about general history. After graduating college, I didn&#x27;t really have a sense of how to continue learning about historical events sans Google.<p>I recently started reading Will Durant&#x27;s historical series &quot;The Story of Civilization&quot;, as I greatly enjoy his writing style. However, upon reading reviews of his work on Amazon I became aware of the (obvious) issues inherent with a work that was produced in the middle of the 20th century; the first book &quot;Our Oriental History&quot; is littered with anachronisms and racial biases that are common for the time (1940 on).<p>This got me to thinking, there must be some [generally] agreed upon version of relatively objective history, albeit most likely split up between topics, time periods and authors.<p>To bring it back to the original question: is it worth staying entirely within Will Durant&#x27;s life work, or should I venture outside of his publications for specific topics? Most notably, I&#x27;m assuming that his understanding of Asian cultures is lacking, but also that there are other unknown unknowns.<p>Please keep in mind this is not hypothetical, I am already committed to reading the entirety of his work and am merely looking to verify the accuracy of his accounts. I am placing a heavy preference on readability, so please keep that in mind as well.
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WheelsAtLarge
One way is to first get a general understanding of the time and area of
history you want to learn. I recommend reading books targeted towards teens.
They give you the info but they don't get too dense. After you get an
understanding you move on to a text books that focus on the area you want to
better understand.

