Burning Issues in Historical Fiction #4: "How much history is too much history?"

Issue #4:  How do you avoid the Tom Clancvy effect in a historical novel, i.e. too much detail?

Someone just told me that the novel I jsut finished "avoided some of the pitfalls of writing historical fiction." I asked her which pitfalls those were, and she told me :

"You avoided going too much into the history, details that did not really matter for the story you are teling. But you also did not get into too many purely modern issues or interpretations."

Let's take her first statement this time... what is an appropriate amount of historical detail in order to tell a story set in that time?

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