modern history

Here are some lines from Jonathan Healey's The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England (2023):

One evening in December 1620, two men approached the door of John Harris's Alehouse in Bridgewater. 

It was a winter's night: the smell of woodsmoke scented the crisp air of the Somerset coast, accompanied by the clattering percussion of the masts from the town's dock. In the windows of the townhouses, candlelight flickered against the warm smoulder of the log fires. 

This is history in the 21st century...so different from and better than traditional history books that didn't evoke images like this but stuck to the facts and figures.