Stephen Ambrose made up hundreds of hours of conversations with Ike

Whom do you trust? Goodwin, after her book on the Dodgers? Not in this life.

 

Are there any pop-historians without similar scandals? Do they all just make things up?

 

Mo Rocca seems to have his act together...

 

Mitchener

 

Manchester?

 

Death of a President was picked apart with malicious fervor.

 

Hence the question mark.. thanks.

 

Haven't heard anyone knock McCullough's work. And I know Doug Brinkley is an academic, but he writes well enough to be a pop-historian. Also enjoy Geoffrey Ward's stuff, The Civil War, his book on New York and the one on The West were quite good.
I'm reading a book on The Oregon Trail, a nice summary of the era, but I've learned the difference between academic works and pop-history is generally, academic works use the history to advance a thesis or new understanding of what the history meant, while pop historians aim to entertain and illuminate.

 

I recently read an academic history of California in the 1950s, and boy was that a slog. Pop history is a helluva lot more fun to read.

 

Was it a Kevin Starr book? Carey McWilliams is also a great source for California history. I've liked Starr's books because they focus on culture as much as they do on business and politics.

 

Yeah, Kevin Starr. His random use of exclamation points made me giggle. The biography of the Beach Boys, The Nearest Faraway Place, covered much the same ground in a much more readable way

 

McCullough has been accused of being a tad hagiographic, but I've liked what I've read, which is only two or three books.