[hayst4ck]

Timothy Snyder is just fantastic: https://snyder.substack.com/

His class on Ukraine on Youtube is fantastic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJczLlwp-d8

If I had a history class taught like this in college I might have looked at it. I think in one of his classes about Ukraine he mentioned that he was a programmer at some point. His explanations of history are often very input/output oriented or explained almost like an algorithm.

His books are also worth reading and every one of his lectures on youtube I have enjoyed.

He's great at giving historical perspective to current affairs, and probably more than anyone else, I feel like he makes the current political climate make sense.

[michalu]

Timothy Snyder may be entertaining in lecturing history but he is spreading lies and has an agenda. Anyone who knows the topic deeply will find it obvious and easy to prove. There were numerous fabrications on wikipedia lately that linked to his work with no other evidence - so I've been looking into his persona and the "history" he teaches which in my opinion is just political propaganda. Usually small but critical things in supporting the case for "new history" he is fabricating - like stating that tzar forced ecumenical patriarch to grant autocephaly by kidnapping him and similar things. Western Ukraine has long been a battlefield between union/catholicism and traditional orthodoxy and lots of fabrications have come from the catholic side mostly jesuits in attempt to gain popular support for their political agenda. Snyder is just a continuation of that same kin in my opinion.

[hayst4ck]

Everyone has an agenda. "Having an agenda" just means "disagrees with me." It's like neutral. If the news reported only what you consider the truth, you would consider it a neutral source. If you watch fox, NPR has an agenda. If you listen to NPR, fox has an agenda. If you are a critical thinker, you see that almost all institutions "have an agenda." In china, "Taiwan is part of China" is neutral, to Taiwanese it is not neutral. The word is meaningless. Is "Taiwan is a country" a lie in China? Clearly context and frame have deep deep implications for interpretation of information.

That's exactly the type of thing Snyder brings up and exactly why I like him so much. He cuts through the crap. He has a very consistent and crisp processing of reality. He systematically dismantles people like you in Q&A's almost every time.

As for what you're saying you must realize that "anonymous dude on the internet" doesn't compare favorably as an authority to "Yale professor of history who has spoken in front of the UN and published several well regarded books"

You are making rather extraordinary claims as if they are self evident, and they are not.

[michalu]

No "everyone has an agenda" doesn't mean disagrees with me. This is history, it has alwaus been used tp push agenda by sone historians and it's easily verifiable and quite obvious if you study the topic without bias.

[thorin]

Yes, this is really excellent, I really struggle to engage with history for some reason, since I was a kid I always found it boring but I have enjoyed the 1st few articles I've read on his site and will finish watching the lecture. I'm not sure why I've struggled with history, but I think it's probably the way it's taught rather than the subject itself. I remember reading History of Civilizations as a teenager and finding it most engaging.

[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/History-Civilizations-Fernand-Braud...