My knowledge in history is very poor. I want to know some basic history. Please recommend some books that don’t dwell on a single incident or period but rather gives an overview. Preferably, books on medieval history. It would be a plus if the book has beautiful prose.
Thank you.
I’d like to color outside the lines of your request just slightly by recommending a palate cleanser, if you will: The Dollop podcast with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds. Their schtick is finding an oddball story from history, and doing a narrowlt focused deep dive on that subject. One host tells the story, the other is usually totally oblivious. Both are comedians by trade, so they riff throughout.
The educational value takes a backseat to the comedy bits, but there’s still a pretty impressive amount of research which goes into the episodes, and their emphasis on weird, niche stories means that they’re often talking about subjects which go unmentioned in general history education. A personal favorite episode of mine is The Jackson Cheese, which talks about a couple enormous wheels of cheese which were gifted to Andrew Jackson following his election to be President in the 1830s. That may sound dull as dishwater, but I’ve yet to hear anyone that’s listened to the episode express that it was a waste of their time.
At any rate, if you want a break from “serious” history education, you can do a lot worse!