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Notes -
A lot of great books courses utilize outside scholarship to give context to works. I did multiple classes studying historiography from primary sources in late antiquity, and we read excerpts of modern "accurate" scholarly works, while reading the entirety of the primary sources assigned. You read all of Herodotus, then you read an excerpt covering the modern view of the Persian Empire, and an archeologist's journal article proposing a reinterpretation, etc.
Few modern histories are important to read cover to cover, from a syllabus perspective.
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