Suggestion For History Books

[downbeatplumb]

I quite like my history in fiction form.

So I like the Sharpe books that take the facts and weave a compelling story around them , explaining when liberties are taken with the facts for narrative reasons.

Much better to learn this way than by lists of dry dates and accounts.

Caveat don't watch any American films based in history. Everything done by anyone especially during wars was done by the USA U571 I'm looking at you.

I like historical fiction, but I can't stand the Sharp books. They read like fan fiction, or Bond goes gets his Napoleon on to me. To each his own own of course. For the nautical end of that time period, I much prefer Patrick O'Brien's Jack Aubry series (it reads like a rich complicated multi-volume novel) or even C.S. Forester, though the later is rather anti-woman.

I also love George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman series. Same time period and not so nautical, but much funnier and footnoted where it deviates from the historical events. Flashman is one of the very best and funniest anti-heros. He is the most decorated British soldier because he is one of the few survivors of most British war disasters of the 1800s and even one American one, Custer's Last Stand. He is a survivor because he is an opportunistic womanizing coward willing to sell his comrades for an expensive cigar. Told first person.

I read the Custer one.

The bit I remember is a conversation where he asked "why was it right for the states to secede from the empire but wrong for the south to secede from the union"

Good question really.