Secret history of the world and conspiracy theories

The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

Say what you will about the author but the Harry Potter series will always be the very definition of a comfort read. I grew up with these books and probably read all of them at least once every few years.

All those weird dedications to Beatrice by Lemony Snickett was a bit freaky.

Seeing as how it is impossible to get unbiased and informed information about politics online anymore, I can totally understand why someone would want to turn to books to educate themselves. Having said that, I do have some bad news for you. Politics is such a shifting, changing thing that if you go further back than say a year or two, then the books are probably not going to help you understand what's going on as much as you might think. They can still give you some insights into the core elements, but you are almost assuredly going to encounter some outdated elements. Other people have already mentioned it too, but your geographical location is also going to determine your understanding of politics. Even countries with the same political beliefs are not going to totally agree with each other about certain things and then there are those countries who claim to belong to a certain political movement, but in reality practice something completely different. I don't want to be completely unhelpful, so these are the books that I have personally read and think can offer you some broad insights about important political topics:

Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright - Madeleine Albright is the first woman to ever serve as U.S. secretary of state, so she isn't just someone who studied history, but also had an active role in shaping it. She was born in Czechoslovakia just before the second World War and in her lifetime she not only had to flee from Hitler, but also from Stalin at the start of the Cold War. She lost loved ones in the Holocaust, so we are talking her about a woman who has personal experiences with the horrors that politics can cause. This is not her first book, but it deals with fascism, which is a topic I see cropping up more and more in political discussions. Albright does a great job explaining what fascism really is, how it got started and also what the warning signs are for the rise of it in our current political climate. I feel like the word is lately being used by everyone to simply describe anyone who disagrees with their political views, which is a dangerous precedent.