It depends a little bit on what you mean historical.

I am a great fan of Dan Carlin, who has a vibrant way to narrate history. His podcasts are the best but he also has books. I loved this one : https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49947205-the-end-is-alwa...

I try to read a book about all major powers from a few centuries back. The last one I read was about Hamilton (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16130.Alexander_Hamilton), which for non-americans is maybe less known than say lincoln.
Napoleon (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25637528-napoleon) or Churchill are other nice examples, because those are usually much more complex than history remembers them for :).

I'd love you to answer your own thread if you have suggestions, I'm searching for new ideas as well!

The "standard" book was Churchill and Brown and, uh, I'd say that one is best avoided. It's awful enough that it may be responsible for a number of those courses being so badly taught....

In other news: does anyone have a history reading list, akin to the one Churchill references, for getting “up to speed” on “major” topics? (In quotes because obviously “history” is an almost unfathomably broad topic).

http://books.google.com/books?id=8HKQEJlAl9gC&printsec=f...

Churchill, Hitler, and "the unnecessary war": how Britain lost its empire and the West lost the world

http://books.google.com/books?id=PYESsQRyIIMC&printsec=f...

Both books are iconoclastic looks at how WWII came to be, and whether it was truly a "just" war. The second is by Pat Buchanan, but neither book is crazy or racist. Both are extremely well-researched and documented. Pat Buchanan's book is explicitly in response to the "just war" trope which was used to justify the US occupation of Iraq, but I think I see the same motivation in Human Smoke.

The most interesting single tidbit I learned from the two books was that Roosevelt was an anti-semite:

http://books.google.com/books?id=8HKQEJlAl9gC&lpg=PP1...

(I looked that vignette up in Morgenthau's memoirs. The story he tells there was meant to justify to the younger Morgenthau Roosevelt's policy of restricting emigration to the US by Jewish refugees.)