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Learning History

History is one of those subjects I think I love but have not been close enough to find out how much or if at all. Is it infatuation from a distance that will vaporize upon contact or is it more serious. Reading history from books written like texts is not appealing but then neither is historical fiction. I am not sure how it is that I want history to be served so I can enjoy it and remember it - the ingredients are right but its cooked all wrong. Growing up in India, I had watched Bhartat Ek Khoj - Discovery of India by Shyam Benegal on Doordarshan. It was a fantastic.

I wished someone would do what Benegal had done to world history - make it come alive. This was somewhere between fact and fiction and it made history accessible and enjoyable to everyone. I have found some interesting history sites like EyeWitness to History and The Flow of History - both offbeat approaches to discussing history. Maybe it is nostalgia more than anything else, but I still looking for something that reminds me of Bharat Ek Khoj but with a much larger scale.

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Anonymous said…
Thanks for those two recommendations. I love history. More than the story, we can learn a lot from the historical incidents. I generally go for specific books like the biographies, specific topics like world war II etc. But one book I liked as a whole was Nehru's Glimpses of the world history. But even Wikipedia does a lot of jUstice to narrowed down topics.

Destination Infinity
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