Of course you should read some Herodotus — who, around 450 bce, essentially invented the practices of history and journalism — but it doesn’t seem appetizing, does it. To get you excited about this fellow, you should first read Ryszard Kapuscinsky’s Travels With Herodotus. Says Kapuscinsky:

And so a person consumed, obsessively tormented by allusion reaches for Herodotus. How many allusions he will find there.

Like Herodotus, who walked across the known world in his day, Kapuscinsky was a paripatetic world journalist and seemed magnetically drawn to fascinating places at explosive and transformative times — in Ethiopia in the early 70s, for example, where he reported on the fall of Hallie Salassie. (His classic The Emporer is from that period). Travels is a reading of Herodotus mixed with Kapuscinsky’s own brilliant travel writing and journalism.

I’d highly recommend this beautifuly layered book: I’m re-reading it and enjoying it just as much as I did a year ago.