I’m currently making my way through The Third Reich Trilogy as an audiobook and it is hands down the best researched, most in-depth piece of history I’ve ever read / listened to.
Evans must have spent half his life in primary sources and uses that research to great effect. The book includes many diary and newspaper extracts from the time for example (including liberal use of Goebbels diary) and goes into detail in all sorts of areas that paint a very clear picture of everyday life in Germany at the time.
It’s long (around 90 hours audio or over 2000 pages) but I have learned so much from it.
After seeing it placed in an episode of Ozark, I took on reading Tony Judt’s Postwar. Such an incredible recount of the lived experiences of Europeans from 1945 to 2005.
While I was reading it, I stumbled into an article titled “The Man Who Freed Me From Cant” written by Ta-Nehisi Coates — another of my favourite authors. Though not a historian, his books and articles record contemporary history with combination of indomitable force and ineffable grace.