Some historians are much better at putting you in the shoes of people by picking the right anecdotes. I like when podcasters put the situation before you and as

Some historians are much better at putting you in the shoes of people by picking the right anecdotes. I like when podcasters put the situation before you and asks you "what would _you_ do?" (Fear and loathing in New Jerusalem, about the founding of Israel, all of Hardcore History). Some other books are stories of specific people, and put you close enough to their life to share their feelings. "Gay Berlin" is a good example. I must agree with you that fiction is much better at this, but it might be easy to associate complete fiction with how things really were. I canonised what happens in Grapes of Wrath as history, but those characters are fictional.