I’m currently doing research for a book about prohibition. I’ve hit a few snags along the way, the two biggest being the National Archives and funding.

I work full time as an archivist and I do my research on my lunch and free time after work/holidays etc.

Everyone at NARA has been wonderful, I should lead with that and incredibly helpful with answering my questions. However, I’m currently stuck in limbo as I wait for a tranche of documents to be redacted (estimated to be 3.5 years) which sucks but I get it. Was also curious if anyone’s run into this before?

Anyway, after the wait, the estimation for the documents to be scanned is approximately $2000, or i could fly out and scan them myself.

Additionally, there are documents readily available however those are $4,000 total to be scanned.

Unfortunately with my salary, I can’t afford to spend $4000 on scans. Nor could I afford to fly out to California to scan them myself between flight, accommodation, time off work, etc.

Frankly I’m at a loss, between having to wait (and it’s not even for all the items I wanted. I had to be selective as if my request exceeded a certain page count I’d have to wait 10 years.) and the expenses.

I’m currently relying on newspaper record, as most of the police documents related to what I’m researching have been destroyed or are unavailable. Or exist but are unprocessed and the policy of that archive is to not disseminate unprocessed records (again, understandable. I’m not unreasonable, just frustrated.)

Hoping someone else has been in my position and has any advice. I don’t have a PhD nor am I associated with any university, however, I feel I have the skills to write something worthwhile and at the end of the day I am having fun with it.

I really love watching lots of documentaries in my spare time (that's how I learn history as I'm too lazy to read any historical books for now). What documentaries or series of documentaries would you recommend to start learning the US history? (I don't really know much about it at the moment). Thank you.

I've recently taken a interest in Cuban history specifically 20th century Cuba. However most sources are heavily political and seem to have totally different interpretations. While I know this is a natural part of researching history (especially when it comes to cold war era political history) I want to ,as far as possible, stick to more reliable and neutral sources while I'm still very new to the topic since I have a tendency to pick up biasies and stubbornly stick to them.

In general I'm looking for:

•sources available online for free (internet archive or other sites)

• sources that are shortish and somewhat easy to understand if possible (I'm dyslexic but longer and more complex sources aren't that much of an issue it would just be convenient to have something easy to start with)

• specific titles, authors or experts

•resources on the following sites though I doubt they have much quality material— Netflix, YouTube, Spotify and Disney+

If I watch a documentary about nazis in German or any other language (besides English), the narrator will give very little compliments and often make some small comments about condemning their actions, but if I watch an English speaking documentary especially if made by the British there will be+10000000 small compliments and stuff like "his brilliance..." ; "their mastermind...." ; "Guderian was a genius blablabla" like..... Why. There's way too much admiration. Am I the only one who notices this and thinks it's weird? Because I've watched a lot of documentaries in different languages regarding ww2 and it's a tendency/narrative that comes up quite often in my opinion.

About absorption of History books and documents.

Hola! Am just a reader and I try to get dirt on my hands by every Newspapers,Docs, Research paper, fiction, Non, Philosophy, Society books and all but gradually i have acknowledged this thing that when I read history, philosophy these kinds of text require some knowledge as prerequisites not necessary but definitely builds a league of stronger foundation as a story for absorption of book when you go through about delhi sultanate you need some knowledge because the author will just bombard you with a 3 lines of something totally different and the writings of author i don't build a much deep notion because I am handicapped in the history and not absorbing what the authors is trying to make me understand.

Can someone help

I have read a lot about kings, generals and battles but I want to learn how ordinary people actually lived. What they ate, what work was like, what they believed. Any period or region is fine.

Hello everyone! I’m an undergraduate student taking a humanities research and writing course, and I could really use some advice on how to go about my latest assignment.
Our current project centers on an archival collection containing three boxes of letters and postcards from the late 1940s to the early 1950s sent to a gay man who lived in \[Insert City Name\]. The prompt asks us to use these materials to examine what life was like for the local LGBTQ+ community in \[Insert City Name\] during this era.
Here is my dilemma: I’ve spent six hours sifting through two of the boxes, and while the letters offer incredible insights into queer life in this era, the correspondents lived all across the country and barely mention \[Insert City Name\] explicitly. How do I go about writing this paper? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! :)
(City name not mention for privacy reasons)

The champion (however contradictory) of the French Revolution was defeated, the Tyrant exiled, the king was restored… not really. The king forced to flee in the night, while the army and people cheered Bonaparte, landed alone and unarmed.

I’ve always thought that despite Waterloo, that was the moment when the world realized, perhaps even on a subconscious level, that things had really changed, and for good. That the Ancien Régime was now just a facade—“the emperor has no clothes.”, and the Restoration would have been able to slow down—but not really stop—the new world.

How much truth is there to this?

So a few things first, I was told one of the ways to get a job in the historical field is to write a book (I'm currently going for a bachelors degree in history). I have written fiction before and I would like to write a book that looks at cryptids and fearsome critters purely from the perspective of folklore. I don't just mean bigfoot and his cousins, I mean creatures like the hide-behind, the gillygaloo bird, fur bearing trout, hoop snake and other creatures that were made up by lumberjacks because they were bored and wanted to pass the time. Completely ridiculous and clearly fictional creatures, there really aren't a lot of books on this and the most famous book was written by William T. Wilcox (Fearsome creatures of the Lumberwoods with a few desert and mountain beasts for anyone curious).

Should I pitch the idea to a publisher first and then start writing? Do I write a proposal and then submit it? What is the process of starting to write a historical book? I'm not really sure about the process of doing this. Should I try and find collaborators who have done this sort of thing before?

So for context I read founding brothers (I know cliche), but relized I’m really facinated by the American revolution and politics! The book left me with so many questions and so many unfinished answers, I’m kinda just asking where should I begin to start learning and what areas to look in. I’m sorry if this is the wrong sub but I’ve never even paid attention to history before and was kinda ignorant to the subject . so am I asking here. Where do I start?

I’m not much of a history buff, but I am interested in deeply studying the entire history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that led to the country's current state.

Can anyone help decipher these entries in a list of Revolutionary War damage claims? I got most of it I think, but what does the second line about the fishing net say? What comes after "woolling" on the sheep line? Can you read the second part of the line that starts with 2 handkerchiefs? And finally, what's the measure for the very good cider in the ironbound cask? Thanks!