State of play: Whether it's book sales, podcasts or TikTok's obsession with the Roman Empire, "the business of history is booming," Bloomberg reports.
By the numbers: Readers in the U.K. and Ireland dropped more on history books in 2023 than in any other year in Nielsen BookData's 25 years of data. Here in the U.S., the genre grew 6% last year in an overall flat book market, Bloomberg notes.
Zoom in: Popular podcasts include "The Rest Is History," "Hardcore History," "Revisionist History" and "Stuff You Missed in History Class."
The public has a "seemingly insatiable appetite for amiable discourse about war, monarchy, empire, plague and revolution," Bloomberg says.
💠Nathan's thought bubble: I love history books, but I have concerns about everyone thinking they're a historian. As one character says in Act 2 of "Wicked": "Where I'm from, we believe all sorts of things that aren't true. We call it 'history.'"
