Here was my reply:
Interesting questions but they can be answered in a few different ways. For instance, most important is the type of history you're looking for. The fellows interested, respectively, in the history of philosophy or ancient Rome or World War II are going to be reading different historians. So, my favorites will be guys or gals who cover the areas of history I'm most interested in.
Another thing to remember is that some of my favorite history books are not written by professional historians at all. A conservative speech writer (Peggy Noonan) wrote my favorite history of the Reagan administration; a soldier wrote my favorite history of the American Civil War (Ulysses Grant); my favorite histories of the U.S. space program were written by two scientists and a novelist (Chris Kraft, Gene Kranz, and Tom Wolfe); and one of the best written, most interesting histories I've ever read starred a race horse -- Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit: An American Legend.
Other valuable histories that come from non-historians are autobiographies. And of special fondness to me is the fact that novelists and playwrights can also serve as excellent chroniclers of history. Such writers usually depict their own times, but certain gifted writers dip into other eras and write historical fiction that is of immense worth -- both as history and as human drama. Especially appreciated by me in this latter category are Dickens, Scott, Tolstoy, Dumas, Hugo, Cooper, Austen, Dostoevsky, Waugh, Pasternak, and the Brontes.
So, if you can keep all of these things in mind, I will now mention a few "professional" historians that have made the top rank for my interests and purposes. I'm quite sure I'll leave a couple out, but here's some names I'm thinking of right now (without classifying them as to time or subject): Shelby Foote, Samuel Eliot Morison, Walter Lord, John Toland, David McCullough, Antonia Fraser, Roland Bainton, Winston Churchill, Paul Johnson, Stephen Ambrose, Bruce Catton, William Prescott, Basil Liddell Hart, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Among these, Solzhenitsyn, Foote, Morison and Toland are my runaway favorites.
Of course, there's a whole lot more to talk over than this quick list including YOUR input about topics, people, and periods of history you're most interested in. So, why not give me a call or zip along an e-mail telling me what day would be best for lunch where we can discuss it further? I'll look forward to it.
