The book that really got me hooked was The rise and fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer. He was a journalist in Berlin before WWII, and you can see the

The book that really got me hooked was The rise and fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer. He was a journalist in Berlin before WWII, and you can see the journalistic background shine through in his narrative. A lot of what I've read since then has been in trying to trace back the references he gives to how the events of WWII recapitulated older conflicts, which I then went and found references in which to learn about. Barbara Tuchman is a delightful mostly medieval historian, and Mary Beard is a wonderful Roman historian. Both have a decidedly personal voice, which happened to click well with me; your milage may vary. Someone else in the thread mentioned Simon Sebag Montefiore, and I've enjoyed most of what he's written. It feels a little less scholarly than some other popular historical sources, but that's just an informal impression from a tyro. Lots of people enjoy Yuval Harari, but I do not enjoy him at all.