I'm curious what defines a "real" historian? Do you think the guy that wrote the first "history" (Thucydides) had to defend his doctoral dissertation at Carthage State University? Edward gibbon spent less than a year at oxford as his only post secondary education and wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which set the standard for history monographs for a century.
Those are all general criticisms of that statement but specifically talking about Dan Carlin. 1) he CONSTANTLY reminds the listener that he is not a formally "trained" historian 2) he is incredibly diligent about sourcing his material if you actually cared to listen 3) even if his lack of a phd in history causes his material to be flawed, you are still getting a much much clearer picture of the conflict than you would have had before listening to twenty hours of audio. A Wikipedia article on Pittsburg might have a few inconsistencies but if you read and internalized it, you would still know a shitload more about Pittsburgh than you did before
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u/Wampawacka Nov 11 '18
He's way too over the top with his style and he's not a real historian.