One of the more niche skills I, and many others, have acquired in studying for a PhD in history is the ability to identify whether a history book is likely to be good or not. This is also something of a curse, since whenever some non-historian friend shows me a new book they’ve bought or are excited to read, I must suppress (something I don’t always succeed at) the urge to pontificate on the merits of such a book. To do so is, more often than not, to take on the role of a vibe killer by pointing out why X popular history book is fundamentally flawed (looking at you Guns, Germs, and Steel, you know what you did). This leads to a natural follow up, though, of how could I help someone find better history books – how can I share this skill of identifying whether a book is likely to be good or not with others who are interested in reading good history books but didn’t spend years of their life getting a fancy piece of paper to hang on their wall? It’s a rather difficult skill to articulate, but in this post, I’m going to do my best to explain my methods and to also discuss the importance of good history.