A Friend's Advice on Reading History

A friend of mine who enjoys reading history told me he tries to stick to books written before the 1960’s because he finds recent books to be inferior and less likely to be truthful.  That is a little too strong. There were bad, inaccurate, sloppy,  biased, and worthless books on history written in the old days, and there have been some good ones written lately, but my friend does have a point. The game often is being played differently  these days at least by academic historians. A lot of what has come out in the last fifty years is corrupted by leftist propaganda, multiculturalist special pleading, and a general post-modernist abandonment of objectivity, proportion, and intellectual honesty. Caveat lector is certainly good advice.    

The same thing is true for popular reference works, including  Wikipedia.  While it can be fine source on non-controversial  topics in fields such as mathematics and the physical sciences, Wikipedia often  is unreliable on topics with political content or relevance –including history.  The propaganda, special pleading, and lack of objectivity, proportion, and intellectual honesty mentioned above can show up  both in the articles and the selection of cited references. An old encyclopedia such as a Britannica from the mid-20^th Century sometimes will serve a curious reader better. Besides it never hurts to check more than one source even in casual reading or completing assignments for school.