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Start with what's interesting to you. Don't force yourself to read in order. If you're curious about the Royals, start with 'Spare.' If you like spy stories, grab 'The Spy and the Traitor.' Find a story you actually want to read, and you'll learn the history without even trying.
That's impossible to answer! For novels, many would say something by Shakespeare or Dickens. For non-fiction, a book like Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own' completely changed how people think. Its impact is still felt today, which makes it one of the most famous.
There's no single "best" book. The "best" one is the one you'll actually finish. For many, that's a narrative non-fiction book like 'The Spy and the Traitor.' It's a true story, but it reads like a spy movie, making it easy and exciting to get through.
No book can be 100% accurate, as history is all about interpretation. The most "accurate" are usually dense academic books. For most readers, the best bet is a book by a respected journalist or author, like Erik Larson, who is famous for backing up their stories with deep research.
"Greatest" usually means "most influential." A few books, like 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' literally changed how history was written. In a modern sense, a book like 'Four Hundred Souls' is "great" because it finds a totally new way to tell a community's story over centuries.
Many students use 'The Norton Anthology of English Literature' because it has all the key texts and explains them. If you just want a good overview that connects the dots, something like 'The Story of English Literature' by Andrew Sanders is a great place to start. It tells you the why behind the books.
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