here are my favorite historians, in no particular order...

1. Thucydides - Hist or Pelopenesian war
2. Livy - Early Roman hist
3. Wm Shier - The rise and fall of the 3rd Reich
4. Francis Parkman - Am History
5. Stephan Ambrose - Am History
6. Julius Caesar - Roman Military History
7. Suetonius - the lives of the Caesars
8. Plutarch - Plutarch's lives
9. Herodotus - Acient History
10 Ed. Gibbon - the decline and fall of the     roman empire.

************************************************
Let's see your top 10.