I think that I’ve historically underrated learning about historical events that happened in the last 30 years, compared to reading about more distant history.
For example, I recently spent time learning about the Bush presidency, and found learning about the Iraq war quite thought-provoking. I found it really easy to learn about things like the foreign policy differences among factions in the Bush admin, because e.g. I already knew the names of most of the actors and their stances are pretty intuitive/easy to understand. But I still found it interesting to understand the dynamics; my background knowledge wasn’t good enough for me to feel like I’d basically heard this all before.
I don’t really have a better suggestion than reading the obvious books. For the Bush presidency, I read/listened to both “Days of Fire”, a book by Peter Baker (a well-regarded journalist), and “Decision Points” by Bush. And I watched/listened to a bunch of interviews with various people involved with the admin.
I have long thought that I should focus on learning history with a recency bias, since knowing about the approximate present screens off events of the past.
I think that I’ve historically underrated learning about historical events that happened in the last 30 years, compared to reading about more distant history.
For example, I recently spent time learning about the Bush presidency, and found learning about the Iraq war quite thought-provoking. I found it really easy to learn about things like the foreign policy differences among factions in the Bush admin, because e.g. I already knew the names of most of the actors and their stances are pretty intuitive/easy to understand. But I still found it interesting to understand the dynamics; my background knowledge wasn’t good enough for me to feel like I’d basically heard this all before.
How do you recommend studying recent history?
I don’t really have a better suggestion than reading the obvious books. For the Bush presidency, I read/listened to both “Days of Fire”, a book by Peter Baker (a well-regarded journalist), and “Decision Points” by Bush. And I watched/listened to a bunch of interviews with various people involved with the admin.
I have long thought that I should focus on learning history with a recency bias, since knowing about the approximate present screens off events of the past.