Your best bet is to read some of the newer work in global, transnational, and comparative history, especially in relation to empire.

Buy these two books:

Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History

and

C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World (this covers 1780-1914, but trust me, you're gonna want it).

Look through their bibliographies and citations when you come across something you're interested in. Then ask again when you have ideas about more specific topic areas.

u/Cachar · 2 points r/AskHistorians

As other contributors to this subreddit have pointed out: there is no single volume of global history that is considered a standard overview work, but I'd like to address the second part of your question:

How could you feasibly go about getting an overview about History, with an eye towards diving deeper into certain aspects that catch your interest?

The simple, pessimistic answer is this: You can't. Even though I have spent years studying history at university I would never claim to have an overview of global History through all eras. And I'm pretty certain that you'd be hard pressed to find someone who does, even if you polled distinguished professors with decades of experience in researching global history. At most I'd be merely uncomfortable - in my particular case - claiming that I have a decent grasp on trends and general goings-on in 19th and 20th European political history, but knowing that there are big and glaring holes I know about and countless other gaps and holes I am not even aware of not being aware of. This stems from the way history is researched and written about, which in turn is determined by the what history as a discipline actually tries to be.

History is a staggeringly ludicrous and gloriously arrogant undertaking, since - in essence - history as a discpline might have any human endeavour big or small as its subject matter, as long as we have sources deemed fit for historical studies - mainly written ones, supplemented by archeaological findings, pictures, video and many others. This leads to a multude not only of questions asked, but of ways to ask questions.

You will find books attempting to give an overview about the decline of one political entity, the impact of events worldwide on a tenously defined trend like "The Birth of the Modern World", the history of particular political projects causing untold suffering in the "Bloodlands", a microhistorical analysis of the thoughts and environment of a particular miller in Italy and many, many more.

The questions you ask and how you ask them shape what portion of history you carve out to examine. Is the author trying to extract the strand of one particular subject (which might be anything from the transatlantic slave trade to eating habits) from a longer time period? Is the author endeavoring to examine a short period of time, trying to give readers insight into all different aspects of this period they deem important? Or is the author switching approaches regularly in a complex attempt to answer a particular question?

In short: trying to get an overview is - in my opinion - impossible, since there are always new ways to approach answering a question, new questions to ask or new ways to ask older questions. So we might as well not bend over backwards to try and achieve the impossible.

But there is no reason to give up trying to read history, since the very way history as a discipline operates is very conducive to leading curious readers from one subject to the next.

So here is my proposal: Don't try to get an overview; you will only end up frustrated and drowned in material. Let your interests guide you naturally. Find a starting point you know about and are interested in and just see where you end up. If you start with wanting to learn about how the 19th century "transformed the world" (as already mentioned by /u/LordOssus) any line of inquiry the authors don't dive too deeply into - or merely mention in passing - might lead you to a vast library of interesting things. In just one "hop" you might go to the changing consumption habit of European societies, from there on to the Slave Trade, the Suffragette Movement, World War I or the political history of Africa before European powers established footholds on the continent. Or a myriad of other directions, to be honest.

In simply following what catches you eye you will, step by step, broaden and deepen your knowledge, which is basically all you can do. So you might as well have fun while you're at it.

u/zagreus9 · 1 point r/AskHistorians

> So that would just be books recommended, not written yet.

Remind me in 4 months and I'll you my dissertation on the relationship between industrialisation and social change.

Well, the ones I own that are relevant to industrialisation are as follows:

Eric Hobsbawm Age of Revoltution: 1789 - 1848 - Also add in Hobsbawm's next two text books, Age of Capital: 1848-1875, and Age of Empirel: 1875-1914

The Ascendancy of Europe: 1815- 1914

The Birth of the Modern World: 1780 - 1914

Roger Osborne: Iron Steam and Money

Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, Deborah Cadbury

Britain's Industrial Revolution: The Making of a Manufacturing People, 1700 - 1870, by Barrie Trinder

Shropshire's Industrial Revolution, by Barrie Trinder

Books on the textile industry that I've used this year (not done much focus on the textile industry, more the Luddite movement)

The Genesis of Industrial Capital: A Study of West Riding Wool Textile Industry, c.1750-1850

The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830 by T.S.Ashton

And just because I mentioned it (can't find the links) the Luddites are covered well by:

"The Risings of the Luddites, chartists and Plug-drawers" by Frank Peel

"The Early English Trade Unions: Documents from the Home Office Papers in the Record Office" by A.Aspinall

"The Luddites: Machine Breaking in Regency England" by M.I.Thomis

"Popular Disturbances and Public Order in Regency England" by Frank Ongley Darvall

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