Fiction

It's a little silly in that the small set of characters experience and interact with every major person and event in history but I learned a lot more about the origins of WWI than I ever had before.
Being involved in the personal stories and seeing historical events as a participant makes a huge difference from simply reading the details in a history book.

After taking a little break from Follett's world I'll probably dig into the next book too.

I have to say I didn't learn a lot of history from Lolita. ; )
It is quite an impressive bit of writing though and quite funny in places.
Amazing that Nabakov's first language was Russian.
He had a much broader grasp of English than most Americans. (Even Tea Partiers. heh. )