Recs if you like The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History...

microhistory: the intensive historical investigation of a well defined smaller unit of research (such as an event, community, individual or a settlement); it aspires to "ask large questions in small places"

Niche nonfiction books that dads are still likely to enjoy that either 1) are not military history at all or 2) a niche area of a war that is not military history

Nonfiction history books focusing on a specific topic or area but follow a narrative structure

ask large questions in small spaces! avoids (but not void of) memoirs/biographies, some case studies, and the macro i'm not a historian or an expert by any means but i am salty. a lot of contemporary lists for microhistory reads contain a lot of books that are absolutely not micro. At. All. think mark kurlansky ("milk", "salt", "cod" etc.), anything that starts with "a short history of [incredibly complex geopolitical event]", or literally any historical account that spans centuries/countries/cultures/individuals. while there is definitely some gray areas and overlap, a good way to attempt to distinguish micro from the macro is macrohistory looks at how an individual/event/object/place changed and influenced the world/society/culture -- an outward expansion of one idea that proliferates time and space. microhistory is the inverse. how did the contemporary society, culture, and world change and influence a specific, tangential individual/place/event? the micro attempts to answer that! so let's reduce the scale of investigation! focus on the ones history would have otherwise forgotten if not for the diligent note takers! we're talking footnotes! anecdotes! indexes! the hot goss! EA-NASIR! macrohistory is about everyone but microhistory is about you and me baby!